Blood Pressure UK explains: “Salt makes your body hold onto water. If you eat too much, the extra water in your blood means there is extra pressure on your blood vessel walls, raising your blood pressure.”
It adds: “If you already have high blood pressure, too much salt will raise it further, and may mean that any blood pressure medicines you’re taking don’t work as well as they should.”
Action on Salt says for every one gram of salt we cut from our average daily intake, there would be approximately 6,000 fewer deaths from strokes and heart attacks each year in the UK.
The organisation says: “It has been estimated that a reduction in salt intake from 10g a day to 6g will reduce blood pressure and could lead to a 16 percent reduction in deaths from strokes and a 12 percent reduction in deaths from coronary heart disease.”
