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No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

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Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#51
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend this book by Ronald Gaucho It's Great! Oops, No It Isn't: Why Clinical Research Can't Guarantee The Right Medical Answers "The truth is, few people know the first thing about clinical research. The public reads about a medical research project that announces unbelievable results for a miraculous drug. Some years later, another investigation completely wipes out those initial favorable findings. Hormones…

I've decided to eat eggs every other day, to balance out the reports that they're good and bad.

I eat six eggs everyday and I haven't died yet. This clearly means science is wrong!

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#52
post #32

Oxygen is bad for us. It oxidizes and damages all kinds of organic chemicals in our bodies that are required for use to live. Oxidization, however, is exactly what provides us with the energy that supports life. Salts are electrolytes. (Electrolytes are salts?) You need them in your body so that your nervous system can conduct signals and keep things going - like your heart. We live. We grow. We hurt. We heal. We get…

Sounds good as a philosophy, but let's make it concrete and see where you stand: if you knew for a fact that not eating sugar would allow you to live for 6.35 years longer, would you still eat sugar?

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#53
post #50

I'm a medical student who actually read the paper this article refers to. I would be very careful trying to draw conclusions from a study like this. I don't think many people in the healthcare community would be very surprised by it. 1) All clinically treated hypertensive patients were excluded - that means if you have kidney or vascular disease (hypertension) and are being treated for it, you aren't counted here. Do…

Number 3 is very interesting. I understand why the press would make silly claims.

But why would medical doctors apply those claims to normal people? Assuming they're not generally considered valid for those who are healthy.

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but the article isn't about weight loss and a lot of research is done on how X food affects the chances of getting Y chronic condition later in life or how to best feed your children so they grow up to their full potential. It's pretty uninteresting to reduce nutrition science to simple dieting.

Sure, you're right that the article isn't about weight loss, but the original comment I was responding to was: > Because a lot of people are suffering and dying of poor nutrition In the developed world, they're mostly suffering and dying because of overconsumption (or reasonable consumption of really high-calorie food). I'm not trying to say that I think it's as simple as 'put down the fork fatty!' or 'put the twinki…

Not all of the questions that we ask about digestion should be related to figuring out how to get people to lose weight.

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#55
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't know basic things about what's good and bad for us. Errr, I think we know these 'basic' things quite fine. Energy burned needs to be >= energy taken in. It's just complicated for other reasons. There are a lot of incentives to stay unhealthy. There're the biological incentives (eating a shitload and packing on a few pounds is good if you're in the jungle and might not eat again for a few weeks), and the in…

Except that energy burned is not by any means a 1:1 correlation with exercised performed. We are inefficient machines, and our efficiency characteristics vary wildly in ways we don't fully understand. Two people consuming the same quantity of energy and exerting the same number of joules on exercise equipment do not see identical or even necessarily related physiological effects. There are many, many factors - other…

while that may be true, for the mast majority of people that over simplification is fine. The high odds are that the fat person running next to me on the tread mill is over weight because they eat too much and do not move enough, not because of the 10 calories per hour I may burn in that work out due to what ever factors.

if it were a small % of overweight people you might have a point, but the high % of overweight people in US in particular is certainly because of calories consumed >> calories burned.

i think the real tragedy is people looking for magical formulas, or giving up because 'its genetics'. further proof of that is that just about any dieting regiment works, the issue is that most people dont stick to them.

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#56
post #10
post #2

The state of nutrition science is pathetic. The science is conflicted over a simple question of fact -- whether or not a trivially measurable short-term effect occurs when you eat one of the most common food additives in the world. If we can't even answer THIS -- it seems like it should be incredibly easy to answer -- I don't see why people can claim anything at all about diets and macronutrients. Nutrition science n…

I'd recommend this book by Ronald Gaucho It's Great! Oops, No It Isn't: Why Clinical Research Can't Guarantee The Right Medical Answers "The truth is, few people know the first thing about clinical research. The public reads about a medical research project that announces unbelievable results for a miraculous drug. Some years later, another investigation completely wipes out those initial favorable findings. Hormones…

This seems like a fascinating book, written to a general audience. Alas, it is priced more like a textbook, way out of the range of the average public. What a shame it will have a very small reach.

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#57
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that energy burned is not by any means a 1:1 correlation with exercised performed. We are inefficient machines, and our efficiency characteristics vary wildly in ways we don't fully understand. Two people consuming the same quantity of energy and exerting the same number of joules on exercise equipment do not see identical or even necessarily related physiological effects. There are many, many factors - other…

while that may be true, for the mast majority of people that over simplification is fine. The high odds are that the fat person running next to me on the tread mill is over weight because they eat too much and do not move enough, not because of the 10 calories per hour I may burn in that work out due to what ever factors. if it were a small % of overweight people you might have a point, but the high % of overweight p…

No, the GP is correct and "calories consumed >> calories burned" is a gross oversimplification. For example, one extra Oreo cookie a day ends up in several pounds gained over a year. Tiny changes in net calories can have very large effects in equilibrium weight. In addition, it is so easy to say "just eat less", but it is very (very) well documented that some overweight people can eat less and lose weight, but they are looking at being extremely hungry every second for the rest of their lives. Once a weight set point has been established, your body can scream at you forever until you regain that weight setting. So easy for "normal" weight people to say "Just eat less".

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#58
post #50

I'm a medical student who actually read the paper this article refers to. I would be very careful trying to draw conclusions from a study like this. I don't think many people in the healthcare community would be very surprised by it. 1) All clinically treated hypertensive patients were excluded - that means if you have kidney or vascular disease (hypertension) and are being treated for it, you aren't counted here. Do…

For #3 the reverse is also true. If Omega 3s do anything to prevent heart disease, it's too late to help if you start gobbling fish-oil once you've got heart disease - study demonstrated no improvement in outcomes for that.

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#59
post #32

Oxygen is bad for us. It oxidizes and damages all kinds of organic chemicals in our bodies that are required for use to live. Oxidization, however, is exactly what provides us with the energy that supports life. Salts are electrolytes. (Electrolytes are salts?) You need them in your body so that your nervous system can conduct signals and keep things going - like your heart. We live. We grow. We hurt. We heal. We get…

>>Rather that avoiding "omg sugar" or "omg salt" or "omg fat," we should just be eating well-rounded diets.

Define well-rounded. ;) Isn't that what we're all trying to decide? We even have some people on here claiming McDonald's can be part of a balanced healthy diet.

Re: No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds

#60
post #50

I'm a medical student who actually read the paper this article refers to. I would be very careful trying to draw conclusions from a study like this. I don't think many people in the healthcare community would be very surprised by it. 1) All clinically treated hypertensive patients were excluded - that means if you have kidney or vascular disease (hypertension) and are being treated for it, you aren't counted here. Do…

>your blood pressure WILL NOT be affected for a very long time //

I was confused but I think you mean "your blood pressure will only be affected for a short time".

You can parse what you said that way but your expression more readily reads [to me, an en-gb native] as saying that blood pressure changes will only appear a long time after salt intake.

I've read that salt has an almost immediate effect on blood pressure and so is used in some emergency treatments to increase blood pressure rapidly. I'd no idea of the mechanism of it though so the hint in 2) is welcome, thanks.

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