Lifecoach: Can people with low blood pressure eat as much salt as they want? The target for adults is to consume no more than 6g per day, which is around a teaspoon in total. The salt added in cooking or at the table is easy enough to monitor, but only a fraction of our salt intake comes from these sources. Around three-quarters comes from processed foods like ready-meals, fast food, meat products (bacon, sausages, tinned meat), some savoury snacks, packet soups, salted or smoked fish and some biscuits and cakes. Other foods that are often high in salt are stock cubes, gravy granules, soy sauce, pickles and some packet sauces. Use food labels to help you choose products that are low in sodium (1g sodium = 2.5g salt). A simple guideline is to limit foods that contain more than 0.2g of sodium per 100g and choose foods that contain less than 0.1g of sodium per 100g where possible. Although these foods may taste a bit bland at first, your taste buds will adapt very quickly so after about three weeks or so you will find that food with much less salt seems to have more flavour; similarly, foods with a lot of salt will begin to taste unpleasant. As well as cutting down on salt, other measures such as maintaining a healthy weight, being active and not smoking or drinking too much will help to protect against high blood pressure and other heart problems. Q. I am in my eighties and since January this year I have been plagued by sweating, day and night. I had the menopause at 40 without any symptoms. I have had tests for angina including the treadmill 'stress test" and a chest X-ray which were OK. The four doctors at my practice are baffled and I wonder if you have any ideas? My thyroid is underactive. I am not overweight and get plenty of exercise; I do Pilates and do a lot of walking. Sorry to bother you but I am desperate - can't sleep. MG, letter It's very unusual for generalised sweating to develop for the first time in a person of more senior years without an underlying cause. Your menopause was early (the average age is 51), but was too long ago to be relevant now. I presume your underactive thyroid is being treated with thyroxine replacement and that your blood tests show you are receiving the correct dose (if your dose is too high, it could cause sweating). Drugs are a very common cause of sweating - see sweathelp.org/pdf/Drugs_2009.pdf for a list of several hundred possibilities. Check to see if any might apply to you. Abnormalities of the immune system, such as lymphoma, may be accompanied by sweating. The fact that you have had a chest X-ray suggests your doctors have considered this, but a more thorough investigation by CAT scan, looking also at the abdomen, may be necessary to be sure, as diagnosis in the early stages can be difficult. If this article were being written 30 years ago, then tuberculosis would be on the list of suspects. But although TB has retreated, it has not disappeared. A skin test (Mantoux test) would help rule it out. Action at the moment should, I think, be focused on looking very hard for the cause of this problem.