Beware of Public Health Researchers
Bearing Low-salt Gifts

Julian P . Midgley, Andrew G. Matthew,
Celia Margaret T. Greenwood, and Alexander G.Logan.
JAMA 1996; 275:1590-1597


I haven't added salt to food in more than 20 years. Why? Because "medical research" had linked dietary salt with high blood pressure (hypertension). Now, researchers, in reviewing 56 clinical trials of hypertensive and normotensive individuals, have concluded that this was bunk! Here are some of their more interesting points.

A low sodium diet may not lower blood pressure. [T]rials of dietarysodium restriction... showed reductions in systolic p ressure and nonsignificant decreases in diastolic pressure. The magnitude of change was larger in trials of older hypertensive subjects and small and nonsignificant in trials of normointensive subjects... There was evidence of publication bias in favor of small trials reporting a reduction in blood pressure...

A low sodium diet is not harmless. Compelling new evidence from a cohort of hypertensive men links low sodium diet with increased risk of heart attack. (Hypertension. 1995;25:1144-1152). Accordingly, dietary sodium restriction cannot be viewed as risk-free intervention with universal benefits.

Public health law is (surprise) misguided. This analysis, in part because of the large number of normotensive trials now published, does not support one of the goals of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (1990), that of lowering blood pressure in the normotensive population at large...


Gee, I wonder what other behavior control recommendations public health and medicalresearchers have been WRONG about?

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