Salted away for another day

Source : The Hindu :SERISH NANISETTI,PRABALIKA M BORAH:Nov 2,2011

The GHMC has teamed up with a private hospital to target the salt monster, Serish Nanisetti and Prabalika M. Borah check out the truth about salt

Salted away for another day

At old-fashioned Indian weddings, when lunch was served on a plantain leaf, a small heapof salt was always placed next to the pickle. On modern dining tables the salt dispenser is as important as the ladle.

When people eat French fries in quick-service restaurants, they not only stuff their mouths with the warm, yellow slivers of deep-fried potatoes, they also lick the residual salt off their fingers.

Medical experts are wary of the effects of salt on the human body.

A hospital has now set the cat among the pigeons with a hoarding that exhorts people to ‘Fight the salt monster'. But can we in India imagine a low-salt pickle or a salt-free Bombay duck? Can we create the tamarind tang of sambar without a generous helping of salt?

“I think we are expecting a very big change in diet,” says Suguna Raman, speaking for Yashoda Hospital. “Salt is such a big part of our culture. But we have to make a beginning. We have to chip it away so that some years down the line there is some change.

That is the reason why our hospital has teamed up with GHMC for this public interest campaign.” Doctors have good reason to focus on salt. “We have seen a rise in the number of people with complaints about cardiac conditions, blood pressure, stroke and more younger people are falling prey. While there are public interest campaigns about diet nobody has targeted sodium, which is the key culprit,” says Suguna.

The harmful effects and benefits of salt are always being debated.

A recent study by the Journal of American Medicine added to the confusion when it revealed the negligible role of salt in physical disorders, while a 1988 study co-related salt intake with high blood pressure.

Facts about salt

Just a pinch of salt on your curd rice or a lick of mango pickle is not likely to send up your blood pressure.

But a pinch here and a dash there can add up to ‘unhealthy' amounts, some studies say. Esther Sathiraj, nutritionist, explains how it works:

Sodium helps maintain the right balance of fluids in your body, helps transmit nerve impulses and influences muscle contraction and relaxation.

When sodium levels are low, your kidneys hold on to the sodium.

When sodium levels are high, your kidneys excrete the excess in urine. But when the intake of sodium is very high the kidneys can't eliminate enough of it, and the sodium starts to accumulate in your blood. Because sodium attracts and holds water, the blood volume increases.

The heart then has to work harder to move more blood through the blood vessels, which increases pressure in the arteries.

Some people's bodies are more sensitive to these effects. If you're sodium sensitive, you retain sodium and fluid more easily, and that increases blood pressure.

If this becomes chronic, it can lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and congestive heart failure.