Is salt the cause of high blood pressure?
The idea that ‘salt is the cause of high blood pressure,’ was
first started by two scholars, Ambard and Beaujard in 1904. The
two scholars investigated the blood pressure of patients after
having them take in salt, and they found out that, in the case
of hypertensive patients, eating fruit which has almost no salt
dropped the subjects’ blood pressure, so they reported that salt
causes high blood pressure.
However, this experiment was performed without the
knowledge that different salts have different effects on
the human body so they could not have obtained the
accurate results. Pure sodium chloride is known to activate
ACE(Angiotensin Converting Enzyme), which is involved in
raising blood pressure. However, salt containing abundant
minerals has different effects on blood pressure.
In the Solar Salt Biotechnology Research Center located in
Mokpo University, Korea, an experiment was conducted using
rats sensitive to salt. Korean solar salt and refined salt was given
to the rats, and their blood pressure in systolic and diastolic
periods was observed. They found that in both systolic and
diastolic periods, the rats given solar salt maintained low blood
pressure. That’s because magnesium, calcium, and potassium,
etc. promote the excretion of surplus sodium, which is what
raises blood pressure.
In Japan’s Kobe University, researchers observed what changes
occur in rats when they ingested mineral salt and refined salt.
When measuring the amount of sodium excretion in the urine
of rats that ingested salt for a month, the ones given refined salt
accumulated 40% of the sodium in their body, while the others
given mineral salt excreted most of the sodium via urine. This
experiment shows that the kind of salt ingested causes different
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