Does Cutting Back on Salt Help Improve Heart Failure?

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, April 5, 2022 (HealthDay News) — If you could have coronary heart failure, there’s excellent news and unhealthy information on how a lot it might assist you to to chop again on salt.

New analysis finds that whereas it would not stop dying or hospitalization amongst sufferers, it does seem to enhance their high quality of life.

Patients with coronary heart failure have been advised for years to scale back the salt of their weight loss plan as a means to assist extend life, however amongst greater than 800 sufferers from six nations, lowering salt consumption did not stop deaths, visits to the emergency room or hospitalizations, the researchers discovered.

Still, “we do assume that there’s a small quantity to be gained by lowering the quantity of sodium within the weight loss plan,” stated researcher Dr. Justin Ezekowitz, a professor within the division of cardiology on the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

The sufferers within the research had been already consuming rather a lot much less salt than most Americans devour, though they’d not achieved the optimum aim of the quantity of salt really helpful, he defined.

“The anticipated aim shouldn’t be lowering medical occasions essentially, nevertheless it does enhance high quality of life, which may be crucial for particular person sufferers,” Ezekowitz stated.

For the research, the analysis group adopted coronary heart failure sufferers from 26 medical facilities in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and New Zealand. Half had been randomly assigned to obtain regular care, and the remainder obtained dietary counseling on find out how to additional cut back their dietary salt consumption.

Patients who obtained counseling got menu recommendations and inspired to cook dinner at dwelling and never add salt. They had been additionally urged to keep away from salty meals.

Patients had been requested to maintain their salt consumption to 1,500 milligrams (mg) per day — about two-thirds of a teaspoon. Before the research, sufferers added a median of two,217 mg per day, or about one teaspoon. After one 12 months, these not receiving dietary recommendation ate a median of two,072 mg of salt day by day, whereas those that obtained dietary steering ate 1,658 mg per day.

Although Ezekowitz’s group did not discover important variations in deaths or hospitalizations between the 2 teams of sufferers, these on the low-salt weight loss plan did present enchancment in high quality of life and within the severity of their coronary heart failure.

Ezekowitz thinks that these outcomes might need been totally different if the research had gone on longer or if the degrees of salt consumption had been even decrease.

The findings usually are not a license to eat as a lot salt as you want, he added.

“People ought to proceed to be involved in regards to the quantity of salt of their weight loss plan and proceed to scale back the sodium of their weight loss plan general,” Ezekowitz stated. “There could also be advantages that we did not measure in our medical trial that they may get from lowering salt within the weight loss plan. A low-salt weight loss plan may very well enhance their general high quality of life. The actual take-home is {that a} low-sodium weight loss plan stays an necessary half for many sufferers.”

The report was printed on-line April 2 in The Lancetjournaland was offered on the American College of Cardiology annual assembly in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Gregg Fonarow, interim chief of the division of cardiology at University of California, Los Angeles, stated for many years sufferers with coronary heart failure have been suggested to limit their salt consumption.

“This longstanding, broadly accepted advice was based mostly on a physiologic rationale, medical statement and knowledgeable opinion quite than having been demonstrated in potential, randomized medical trials,” he famous.

While newer pointers for coronary heart failure have acknowledged the uncertainty about the advantages of lowering salt, many sufferers have nonetheless been advised to scale back their salt to very low ranges, Fonarow stated.

“The proof from this crucial randomized medical trial means that dietary sodium restriction to a goal of lower than 1,500 mg per day in sufferers with coronary heart failure didn’t cut back mortality, cardiovascular-related hospitalization or cardiovascular-related emergency room visits,” he stated.

For sufferers with coronary heart failure, it stays unclear whether or not any stage of salt restriction affords medical advantages, Fonarow stated.

“Yet you will need to take into account the standard care comparability group was consuming slightly over 2,000 mg of sodium day by day, which continues to be decrease than the three,400 mg of sodium that’s the common quantity consumed within the U.S. by the overall inhabitants,” he stated.

Patients with coronary heart failure ought to focus on with their physician how these new findings may apply to them, Fonarow stated.

The key to residing with coronary heart failure is to observe the confirmed therapy recommendation, he stated.

“Importantly, use and adherence to disease-modifying pointers and medical remedy have been proven to be the perfect and most secure means to enhance medical outcomes for sufferers with coronary heart failure,” Fonarow stated.

More info

For extra on salt and coronary heart well being, head to the American Heart Association.

SOURCES: Justin Ezekowitz, MBBCh, professor, division of cardiology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; Gregg Fonarow, MD, interim chief, UCLA Division of Cardiology, Los Angeles; The Lancet, April 2, 2022, on-line