Higher Serum Sodium Linked to Premature Aging

#1

Study suggests that higher blood levels of sodium are linked to premature aging and that inadequate hydration may be a primary causative factor.

News Article:

Study:

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#2

Video on the topic

#3

I have 141… This was done after many days where I drank loads of almond milk (though also loads of olives)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jch.14021

Still though, the data shows that ppl with lowest mortality have sodium intake that’s roughly 150-200% of the RDA of sodium…

#4

Sodium replacement does causally lower risk of strokes etc though:

#5

Just increase potassium to decrease the risk of increased sodium.

I do eat a lot of food that’s fortified with high sodium, as do the Japanese, and clearly sodium isn’t the most important thing for aging (esp when you just have high sodium and are super-healthy on all other metrics).

#6

Food with 1% salt tastes good, but it isn’t healthy in all cases.
There’s def better things to optimize though.
I think I’m going to buy one of those lower sodium salts and use those. Like 35% less, with more potassium. Possible to go to 50% or 100% potassium as added salt, depending on taste etc.

#7

Yeah but I hate wasting time preparing food and most pre-packaged vegetables have lots of sodium. Compared with other variables like microplastics or saturated fat or excessively oxidized PUFAs or excess calories, it’s the least of my worries (though salt nowadays tends to be high in microplastics). Especially because there is one simple solution to all of this: increase potassium salt intake

Ugh if I had Thiel’s wealth, I’d have a personal chef (like Bryan Johnson) who could serve me the right vegetables

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#8

The video linked is more about water in take in relation to sodium. Eating lots of sodium without adequate water intake (increasing much higher than 140 mmol/L), might be bad. “Enjoy salted food, but make sure to get potassium and adequate water too”? Some can go the Bryan Johnson route and only use potassium chloride, but he does get some sodium from his protein powder.

MSG also has lower sodium and can be used with a lower sodium salt.

#9

I’m just seeing this now. I tend to drink a lot of tea in the morning but little fluid in afternoon and evening. Dr Johnson (of fructose fame) advised drinking water with any salt intake. As I recall he was thinking about kidney health. I need to have low sodium in my dinner to match my low water intake at night. My sodium was 138 on my last draw, so on average I’m good. But Dr Johnson said kidneys get damaged a little at a time, and it accumulates.

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#10

The main mechanism for decreasing lifespan with increased sodium intake is that increased salt intake increases blood pressure in some people. If your blood pressure is normal I wouldn’t worry too much about your sodium intake. Eat a banana and you can take it with a grain of salt.

Everything you ever wanted to know about sodium intake:

“Thus, for sodium as for any other nutrient, such U-shape curve simply reflects that both an excessively low and an excessively high intake may prove to be harmful. However, what increasingly becomes clear in the sodium saga is that, although blood pressure correlates to some extent with sodium intake, there may be a paradoxical discrepancy between blood pressure and hard endpoints such as life expectancy and death. As the present data document, life expectancy increases (up to a point) and mortality decreases with sodium intake.”

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