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The American Heart Association recommends that you, “Aim to eat less than 1,500 mg of sodium per day.” It’s in bold on their site.
Apparently they want you to die. Because the American Journal of Hypertension reports that:
Both low sodium intakes and high sodium intakes are associated with increased mortality, consistent with a U-shaped association between sodium intake and health outcomes.
In other words yes, high sodium intake leads to increased risk of death. But so does low sodium intake! Did you doctor tell you that?
How low is low?
Ahh, good question. Because of course “high” and “low” depend on who you ask. Let’s put some numbers to this thing.
The various studies all measure in millimoles, or mmol. Unless you’re taking a chemistry exam you don’t need to know how to calculate that, just that the conversion from mmol to mg is: 1 mmol sodium = 23 mg sodium
That means the AHA recommendation is that you limit your daily intake to about 65mmol of salt per day. But the AJH study classifies “low intake” as anything under 115 mmol.
Let’s sum up
- AJH shows that consuming less than 115 mmol per day of sodium increases your risk of death.
- AHA recommends (in boldface) that you consume about 65 mmol of sodium per day.
- AHA wants you to kill yourself.