Average sodium intake more than double recommended daily limit for these patients
THURSDAY, March 9, 2017 (HealthDay News) — Americans with hypertension are getting more sodium in their diet than they did in 1999, according to research being presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, to be held from March 17 to 19 in Washington, D.C.
Sameer Bansilal, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues collected data on 13,000 men and women who took part in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2012. All of the participants had hypertension. Their average age was 60.
The researchers found that daily sodium intake increased among individuals with hypertension by more than 14 percent overall from 1999 to 2012. Among Hispanics and blacks, sodium consumption increased 26 and 20 percent, respectively. Among whites, sodium consumption increased 2 percent. People with hypertension consumed an average of 2,900 mg of sodium per day in 1999 and 3,350 mg per day in 2012.
Patients with the lowest salt consumption included those who had already had a heart attack or stroke, those taking blood pressure medications, patients with diabetes, obese patients, and those with heart failure, the investigators found.
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