Dietary reform may work a great deal in helping people dealing with hypertension. High-salt diet is a common perpetrator of health issues like heart ailments, kidney failure, memory loss etc., all stemming from its impact on our blood pressure. A new study confirms this theory with its latest research that discovered a low-salt diet may help promote healthy gut as well as improve blood pressure level. 

Health organisations like American Heart Association recommend an average intake of 2300 milligrams of salt per day. Anything excess to this may not be good for health, especially for hypertension patients.
To verify this, researchers from Augusta University, Georgia examined the blood of 145 adults with untreated hypertension, with daily sodium intake close to the 2,300 milligrams for six weeks. The team discovered that controlled-salt diet resulted in increased levels of short-chain fatty acids, which supports healthy microbiome in the blood. The hypertensive participants experienced decreased blood pressure and more compliant blood vessels.

Dr. Haidong Zhu, molecular geneticist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, said, “Emerging evidence suggests that a high-salt diet alters the gut microbiome, particularly in animal models of salt-sensitive hypertension, but there is little human data. We are trying to understand underlying mechanisms.”

The study confirms a direct link between the gut microbiome and blood pressure and how high-salt diet can have a negative impact on them. The study findings were published in the journal ‘Hypertension’.