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Comment by owenmarshall | Hacker News Reader

One other recent study that jumped out at me was one on salt: apparently new studies are showing that CDC guidelines on sodium intake are far too low(1) and should be increased for health.

I wonder if much of the problem with the seemingly contradictory nature of studies like this the wide variance you see with us humans. I know good experimental design is about controlling for these variables, but it seems to be extremely difficult. Are the Danes in the above study eating something else that provides a benefit? Are they, on aggregate, more physically active than Americans? Is there a genetic variation present that means if I ate that much salt I'd have problems?

At the end of the day, I'll always take the guideline oft-attributed to Oscar Wilde: "Everything in moderation, including moderation."

[1] http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20140402/cdc-salt-gui...

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here's another great one from Alan Aragon: "Avoid food avoidance."

I think the salt thing is somewhat a problem of causation vs. correlation. If you have hypertension it can be a good idea to limit salt intake; but salt intake does not cause hypertension.

I'm wary of any health advice that stems solely from epidemiological study. I'm not sure why we so easily take a hypothesis as a conclusion, and epidemiological study, while valuable, can only produce a hypothesis that requires a controlled experiment to test. Yet it seems 90% of the "red meat causes diabetes!" articles we see are usually framing a hypothesis as the result of an experiment.

I have an anecdote I feel like sharing. Please take it with a grain of... you know.

I've had hypertension since I was 17, but I never got on medication. I recently made the decision to completely give up added salt. I only ate my own salt-free cooking for about 6 months and I ate a diet high in meat, fish and vegetables. I did not pick up exercise. My BP dropped from 145/90 to 125/80 within the first month. I check my BP weekly and my average BP is 120/75.

My parents cook with a lot of salt, I notice this now when I eat at their place. I am confident that the high salt diet they "gave" me for so many years, combined with restaurant food, was the direct cause of my 5 year strugle with high blood pressure.

I could be wrong, but I am nonetheless very happy with the results of my diet based solution.

I think you'd agree that having hypertension at 17 is not typical, but being 17 and consuming a LOT of salt (junk food) is very typical.

So which is more likely; you're genetically predisposed to hypertension, which your high-salt diet exposed in your teens, or that your high-salt diet caused your hypertension?

I doubt your conclusion, but it does make me happy that you've found a solution that works for you!

Thanks. I see what you're saying and I think you're right. The point you were originally making about causation vs correlation is more clear to me now. I guess I'm guilty of letting myself get too excited over what worked for me.

Exactly. Aragon is one of the few voices of reason in this ridiculous field.

After I realized how little we know about the human body I stopped worrying about these things and I now eat what makes me feel better. The reality is that in a lot of areas medicine don't' have an answer but they just guess given some observations. SO I started paying attention to how I feel after eating certain food. For example I noticed that a nice breakfast and rich salad for lunch keep me lucid for the day. I also avoid ingesting a lot of sugar at once and caffeine, with this I feel less tired at the end of the day. I don't track long term effects but for the past six months it worked pretty well, and without eating like a monk.

Discussions about salt always remind me of the story of the Russian Lykov family, who had spent 40 years living in isolation. When they were first found, they didn't even know WW2 had happened and the only gift they would accept from the outside world was salt, something they simply couldn't get enough of living in the forests of Siberia. They described living without salt as "torture".

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russ...

Another video, a first contact with a tribe in Papau New Guinea, they introduce them to rice. At first they don't like it, but when they add salt, the tribe becomes excited and they share in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd0I1xAICOc

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