vIndianz.com (21 Jan, 2010) — Toronto: Half a teaspoon cut in the use of salt daily can save 100,000 lives, a latest study claims.
Experts assert that reduction in half a teaspoon of salt every day, equal to 1,200 milligrams of sodium, can prevent up to 120,000 fresh cases of coronary heart disease, 66,000 strokes and 99,000 heart attacks.
Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, lead author of the study, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco and co-director of the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at the San Francisco General Hospital, insists, “The numbers are enormous.”
The recommend daily intake for adults up to age 50 is 1,500 mg, whereas the upper limit is 2,300 mg.
However the average intake in Canada is about 3,100 mg, whereas in the U.S., it’s about 3,400 mg.
“This again just highlight the ever-increasing quantity of facts that we require to, as a society, reduces the amount of salt that’s added to food. That’s actually the concern at the end of the day,” Globe and Mail quoted Norm Campbell, Canadian research chair in hypertension prevention and control, as saying.
Bibbins-Domingo anticipated the benefits of population-wide sodium lessening using a refined computer simulation plan called the ‘Coronary Heart Disease Policy Model.’
She used census data and government information on cardiovascular risk factors and other issues affecting the population in order to quantify the impact of a 1,200-mg sodium reduction across the population.
He said: “I would be in agreement that it is very hard to precisely model the effects, and this study has been done very cautiously using very complicated modeling techniques, but just about anyone could forecast the magnitude of this outcome doing back-of-the-envelope calculations because it is so significant.”
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