Sodium chloride, or table salt, contains two vital minerals -- sodium and chloride -- that you need to maintain health. However, too much sodium chloride isn't healthy and in fact can lead to a variety of serious health problems caused by high blood pressure. The typical American diet is very high in sodium chloride.
Sodium Chloride
Sodium chloride is an ionic salt, meaning it's made up of positively charged particles of sodium that are attracted to negatively charged particles of chloride, which is a form of the element chlorine. You need both sodium and chloride to function normally, explains Dr. Lauralee Sherwood in her book "Human Physiology." Both help maintain fluid balance, and your cells use sodium to communicate with one another and move molecules in and out of the cells.
Hypertension
The primary health problem associated with too much sodium chloride is called hypertension, or high blood pressure. Sodium chloride that you eat ends up in the blood and causes your body to retain water. This increases the fluid volume in your blood vessels, which can lead to excessively high blood pressure, explains Dr. Gary Thibodeau in his book "Anatomy and Physiology." The high blood pressure strains both your blood vessels and your heart.
Associated Problems
Hypertension, because of the strain it puts on your blood vessels and heart, can lead to a great variety of other health problems, including atherosclerosis, which is hardening of the arteries. This, in turn, increases your chances of a heart attack or stroke, explains MayoClinic.com. You are also at risk for problems with memory and cognition, vision problems and aneurism, which is a thinning and potential rupture of the arterial walls.
Avoiding Problems
To help you avoid problems with hypertension due to excess sodium chloride consumption, you should maintain a healthy level of salt in your diet. Even though you need salt to survive, the typical diet is nowhere near too low in salt; instead of making sure you get enough, the challenge is to make sure you don't get too much. You should consume no more than 2,300 mg of salt per day and less than 1,500 mg per day if you're at high risk for hypertension due to genetic factors.
References
- "Human Physiology"; Lauralee Sherwood, Ph.D.; 2004
- "Anatomy and Physiology"; Gary Thibodeau, Ph.D.; 2007
- MayoClinic.com: Hypertension
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