<story><title>Salt, We Misjudged You</title><url>http://nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arn</author><text>So, I always cringe a little when I read medical conclusions in the mainstream media.  And I&apos;ll be upfront.  I&apos;m probably biased on the side of medicine on this one.  I&apos;m a former nephrologist.&lt;p&gt;The one study this person mentions by name (and dismisses) is the DASH-Sodium Study.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet#Study_Results&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet#Study_Results&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Like the previous study, it was based on a large sample (412 participants) and was a multi-center, randomized, outpatient feeding study where the subjects were given all their food.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The DASH-Sodium study found that reductions in sodium intake produced significantly lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures in both the control and DASH diets. Study results indicate that the quantity of dietary sodium in the control diet was twice as powerful in its effect on blood pressure as it was in the DASH diet.&quot;&lt;p&gt;So, positive conclusions (lower salt -&amp;#62; lower blood pressure) in a seemingly well designed study.  People were randomized, it was prospective, and people given all their food.  So, change one thing and see what happens.&lt;p&gt;The author here seems to cite other studies to make the opposing case (low salt = bad), but doesn&apos;t give exact references.  I did a quick google search and found this one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04salt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04salt.htm...&lt;/a&gt; But you can already tell it&apos;s an inferior study.  &quot;It involved only those without high blood pressure at the start, was observational, considered at best suggestive and not conclusive.&quot;&lt;p&gt;So, let&apos;s try to compare apples to apples.&lt;p&gt;He points out that the DASH study didn&apos;t conclude anything about death or cardiovascular disease.  Yes, that&apos;s true.  So sure, there&apos;s a chance that despite blood pressure reductions a low salt diet could cause problems.  But it&apos;s not the obvious conclusion.  Anyone have any solid studies on this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joe_the_user</author><text>Uh,&lt;p&gt;He points out that the study followed people for &lt;i&gt;30 days&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;And made recommendations for life-long behavior.&lt;p&gt;And wasn&apos;t looking at final results but markers (blood pressure).&lt;p&gt;And was the main argument against salt consumption when we do have some data on people&apos;s life-long behaviors and their result.&lt;p&gt;And this wasn&apos;t &quot;medicine&quot; that spoke but a particular institution making recommendations.&lt;p&gt;Edit: removed possibly inflammatory point</text></comment>
<story><title>Salt, We Misjudged You</title><url>http://nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arn</author><text>So, I always cringe a little when I read medical conclusions in the mainstream media.  And I&apos;ll be upfront.  I&apos;m probably biased on the side of medicine on this one.  I&apos;m a former nephrologist.&lt;p&gt;The one study this person mentions by name (and dismisses) is the DASH-Sodium Study.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet#Study_Results&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet#Study_Results&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Like the previous study, it was based on a large sample (412 participants) and was a multi-center, randomized, outpatient feeding study where the subjects were given all their food.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The DASH-Sodium study found that reductions in sodium intake produced significantly lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures in both the control and DASH diets. Study results indicate that the quantity of dietary sodium in the control diet was twice as powerful in its effect on blood pressure as it was in the DASH diet.&quot;&lt;p&gt;So, positive conclusions (lower salt -&amp;#62; lower blood pressure) in a seemingly well designed study.  People were randomized, it was prospective, and people given all their food.  So, change one thing and see what happens.&lt;p&gt;The author here seems to cite other studies to make the opposing case (low salt = bad), but doesn&apos;t give exact references.  I did a quick google search and found this one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04salt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04salt.htm...&lt;/a&gt; But you can already tell it&apos;s an inferior study.  &quot;It involved only those without high blood pressure at the start, was observational, considered at best suggestive and not conclusive.&quot;&lt;p&gt;So, let&apos;s try to compare apples to apples.&lt;p&gt;He points out that the DASH study didn&apos;t conclude anything about death or cardiovascular disease.  Yes, that&apos;s true.  So sure, there&apos;s a chance that despite blood pressure reductions a low salt diet could cause problems.  But it&apos;s not the obvious conclusion.  Anyone have any solid studies on this?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>streptomycin</author><text>&amp;#62; I always cringe a little when I read medical conclusions in the mainstream media.&lt;p&gt;I usually do too, especially articles about nutrition which are notoriously unreliable due to the near complete lack of randomized, controlled, prospective studies and the abundance of observational studies, but this one doesn&apos;t seem too bad. In fact, the same author published a similar article in Science last millennium &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/rice/Stat2/salt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/rice/Stat2/salt.html&lt;/a&gt; so I don&apos;t think you can blame the mainstream media too much here if they&apos;re just printing an article similar to what would satisfy Science&apos;s editorial standards.</text></comment>