It's so nice to spice up your food with a pinch of salt or to dig into a bag of chips. But there's a damn good reason not to.
It appears that salt can worsen inflammation in the body and arteriosclerosis, reports the Heart Foundation based on research at the Amsterdam UMC.
Read also: 'Tips to eat less salt'
According to the researchers, this is the first time that salt has been shown to promote inflammation. “In this way, salt could aggravate arteriosclerosis. This is a chronic inflammatory process in the blood vessel wall, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke," the researchers report to De Telegraaf.
Research
For the study, part of a group of healthy volunteers was given a low-salt diet and others a diet high in salt. The latter group showed that their blood pressure rose, but that more white blood cells were also present in their skin tissue. These white blood cells are active in inflammatory reactions in the body.
