Salt Linked To Autoimmune Diseases 308
ananyo writes "The incidence of autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes, has spiked in developed countries in recent decades. In three studies published today, researchers describe the molecular pathways that can lead to autoimmune disease and identify one possible culprit that has been right under our noses — and on our tables — the entire time: salt. Some forms of autoimmunity have been linked to overproduction of TH17 cells, a type of helper T cell that produces an inflammatory protein called interleukin-17. Now scientists have found sodium chloride turns on the production of these cells (abstract). They also showed that in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis, a high-salt diet accelerated the disease's progression (abstract)."
Bollocks (Score:5, Insightful)
These finding are contradicted by the epidemiological evidence. The hazards of low salt are immediate and deadly. The hazards of high salt are hard to detect. The chances that there are other variables at work are high. Just because you have a pathway, it doesn't mean you've identified all the regulatory mechanisms.
Re:most salt is not real salt anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everything good is bad for you (Score:4, Insightful)
Even water has an LD50 after all. Too much of it will leach away all of the electrolytes (including sodium chloride) from your body, and kill you.
Mother Nature needs to give us kidneys...oh, wait (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with these guesses about salt is our kidneys are specifically designed for actively and precisely maintaining homeostasis of certain key ions (Na, Cl, K, Ca) in the bloodstream. If it weren't we would simply die within days or sooner. Moderate salt with good hydration is probably not harmful at all -- it is probably good for you as it helps the kidneys filter other bad stuff out. Low salt could easily be bad for you.
High salt plus low hydration might be bad. But where exactly is the line where moderate salt becomes high? Guessing based on what we eat is for witch doctors.
So I would like to see an actual study showing how adding/subtracting a little salt changes anything measurable at all about the long term serum average, otherwise I am inclined to believe that this guess is baloney. We are not walking petri dishes.
(There are specific diseases where controlling salts are very important, but that is a separate issue.)
Too much salt (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to give up salt completely some years ago and it took months before I regained my ability to taste unsalted food. Now, food without salt actually tastes much better that the over-salted crap served to us everywhere.
Yes, the body requires some sodium chloride but the amount is very small. What most people ingest is far, far beyond that. As with just about anything, too much will harm you.
Re:Didn't they mean... (Score:2, Insightful)
Salt consumption declined at the start of the 20th century with the spread of refrigeration. Then through the 20th century it rose again as consumption of processed food grew.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bollocks (Score:2, Insightful)
Except for my blood pressure
Re:Bollocks (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/Hypertension/36248 [medpagetoday.com]
In 2011, for example, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study by Stolarz-Skrzypek et al. that found only a weak correlation between salt and blood pressure
Re:Mother Nature needs to give us kidneys...oh, wa (Score:4, Insightful)
Moderate salt intake is mandatory, if you're not consuming any you'll eventually run low and wind up dead or brain damaged. And, that's not as hard as people think, all it takes is a few days of unseasonable weather if you've been low balling your consumption to get seriously ill. As in wind up in the ICU of the local hospital with life threatening brain damage.
Yes, that's rather unlikely as most people consume so much salt that it would take weeks or more to run low, but it can and does happen.
Re:Everything good is bad for you (Score:5, Insightful)
The human body is a badly designed, self-destructing patchwork of bits that are perpetually one bad jolt away from a breakdown, so it's not surprising that they've discovered yet again, that excessive quantities of things we need to live will also kill us.
Actually I draw the opposite conclusion from this. The human body is so amazingly flexible and adaptable, that it can survive on a huge variety of diets, and can compensate for poor diets so well that it can be difficult to realize the long-term effects that these poor diets are having, given the relatively benign short-term symptoms.
Re:Everything good is bad for you (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Everything good is bad for you (Score:4, Insightful)
And at the end of the day what does all this denial get you? Even Jesus didn't get out of here alive folks but let us say, just for the sake of argument they had a new "lets all eat cardboard" diet that made you live to 120....anybody spent any time with someone over 85?
Speak for yourself, you young whippersnapper, because I think life is still grand. I've gone from seeing computers that filled rooms of tubes to ones that fit on a desk to ones you can carry in your hand, each more powerful than the last. Granted, you kids these days have some crazy ideas. And won't stay off my lawn. But if I could live to 120 and still have the quality of life I do now, I'd find something useful to do with all that extra time. If nothing else, books are being written faster than I can read them.
Eat meat and don't eat sugar or much bread. Walk every day. If the walking gets tough, take a bit of whiskey and walk anyway. I figure I have at least another good decade in me, although my eyes aren't what they used to be. Certainly, it is painful to lose friends and relatives over the years, and it is especially sad to see the children of friends who then became friends die of "old age". But life is still precious, and you kids have no idea how wonderful it is.
Plus, we old people are keeping some amazing secrets from you. Hurry up with that immortality serum and we might decide to share.
Re:Everything good is bad for you (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, different ancient populations ate differently.
Inuits (Eskimos) eat an extremely high protein, high fat diet. Not much farming in the far north.
Nordic populations (Finns and Swedes for example) eat a diet different from Spaniards, who eat a diet different from sub-Saharan Africans who eat a diet different from southern Asians.
It seems to me that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to diet. One needs to understand one's genetic ancestry, and then using that as a guide, figure out what's best for that person. What might be too much protein for a vegetarian south Asian farmer might not be enough for a Finn or an Inuit hunter. What might be too much fat or carbohydrate for one population might not be enough for another.