Exercise May Cut Salt’s Effect on Blood Pressure

(WebMD) — Regular exercise and a low-sodium diet are two lifestyle changes that are often recommended to lower high blood pressure.

Now a new study shows that one appears to influence the other.

Specifically, physical activity appears to help keep blood pressure from climbing after people eat eye-popping amounts of salt — 18,000 milligrams a day to be exact. That’s about 10 times the recommended daily intake for sodium. As a visual aid, picture 18 salted soft pretzels like the kind sold at mall food courts.

That’s much more than most people ever come close to, so some experts question whether the findings of the study could be applied to the real world.

“Because the high salt part of this was so high salt, I’m not sure you can gain any insight into what you can do on a daily basis, eating a normal diet,” says A. Marc Gillinov, MD. Gillinov is a staff cardiac surgeon at the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio.

But Gillinov also says that the study is interesting because it is among the first to look at the relationship between physical activity and salt sensitivity and that it adds to what’s already known about how to keep blood pressure within healthy limits.

“The exact mechanism by which salt influences blood pressure is not completely worked out,” he tells WebMD. “But there’s no question that over the course of years, the more salt you eat, the more likely you are to get high blood pressure as you get older, as you get to be a middle-aged or older adult.”

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