I just posted a very interesting article by Dietician Dr. Janet Brill, who is NABBW's Healthy Heart Associate. It's called Salt: A Recipe to Help You Lower Intake to Lower Blood Pressure and Prevent Heart Disease. A long title for a very short article that includes a yummy recipe for Shrimp Diablo.

The article comes on the heels of another article she wrote related to current recommendations with regard to our recommended sodium intake.

That one's the New Salt Message: A Smoking Gun

In it, Brill states that:


She makes an interesting connection here:


The boldface is my addition, to highlight what looks like a significant conflict of interest to me.

I'm surprised the IOM would let this happen... and I just wanted to advise all of our BWS members with family members diagnosed with hypertension, or prehypertension, that they ought not to let down their guard when it comes to something as controllable as our salt intake.

So has anyone else heard about this change?

I hadn't heard that, Anne. But whenever a new study comes out, my first questions are always who paid for it and who performed the study. I suppose I'm luckier than some as I had a class on research methods in grad school; that really opened my eyes!

I find this a rather frightening article. So many people on my father's side (including my Dad) died of stroke, so I feel particularly strong about watching my sodium intake. And when my brother was battling through his Hodgkin's Lymphoma, one of the biggest problems his doctor had was Gary's high sodium levels. No matter what the doctors tried, they could not get his sodium down. Throughout his chemo and right into his last days in ICU, every part of his body was being affected by his high sodium. My brother lived on fast food. That was a huge wake-up call to me and my other two brothers, to be more vigilant about our sodium intake.

To hear someone of this caliber suggest otherwise is, IMO, dangerous and questionable.