BAD EFFECT OF SALT

SALT'S EFFECT IN THE BODY

Salt works on your kidneys to make your body
hold on to more water.
This extra stored water raises your blood
pressure and puts strain on your kidneys,
arteries, heart and brain.
Your body removes unwanted fluid by
filtering your blood through your kidneys.
Here any extra fluid is sucked out and put
into your bladder to be removed as urine.
To do this, your kidneys use osmosis to
draw the extra water out of your blood.
This process uses a delicate balance of
sodium and potassium to pull the water
across a wall of cells from the
bloodstream into a collecting channel that
leads to the bladder.
Eating salt raises the amount of sodium in
your bloodstream and wrecks the delicate
balance, reducing the ability of your kidneys
to remove the water.
The result is a higher blood pressure due to
the extra fluid and extra strain on the delicate
blood vessels leading to the kidneys.
Over time, this extra strain can damage the
kidney-known as kidney disease. This
reduces their ability to filter out unwanted
and toxic waste products, which then start to
build up in the body.
If kidney disease is left untreated and the
blood pressure isn't lowered, the damage can
lead to kidney failure. This is when the
kidneys are no longer able to be filter the
blood and the body slowly becomes poisoned by
its own toxic waste products.
If you have high blood pressure and are being
treated with a diuretic medication, this makes
the kidneys remove more fluid from the
bloodstream. Because the sodium in salt
counteracts this effect, reducing your salt
intake will make your blood pressure medicine
more effective.

ARTERIES
The extra blood pressure caused by
eating too much salt puts extra
strain on the insides of your
arteries.
To cope with the extra strain, the
tiny muscles in the artery walls
become stronger and thicker. Yet this only
makes the space inside the arteries smaller
and raises your blood pressure even higher.
This cycle of increasing blood pressure (which
occurs slowly over a number of years) can
ultimately lead to the arteries bursting or
becoming so narrow that they then clog up
entirely.
When this happens, the organs of the body
that were receiving the blood from the
arteries become starved of the oxygen and
nutrients they need. This can result in the
organs being damaged and can be fatal.

HEART
The raised blood pressure caused by
eating too much salt may damage the
arteries leading to the heart.
At first, it may cause a slight reduction
in the amount of blood reaching the heart.
This may lead to angina (sharp pains in
the chest when being active).
With this condition the cells in the heart
don't work as well as they should because
they are not receiving enough oxygen and
nutrients. However, lowering blood pressure
may help to alleviate some of the problems and
reduce the risk of greater damage.
If you continue to eat too much salt then,
over time, the damage caused by the extra
blood pressure may become so severe that the
arteries burst or become completely clogged.
If this happens, then the part of the heart
that was receiving the blood no longer gets the
oxygen and nutrients it needs and dies. The
result is a heart attack.
The best way to prevent a heart attack is to
stop the arteries becoming damaged. And one
of the best ways of doing this is keep your
blood pressure down by eating less salt.

BRAIN
The raised blood pressure caused by eating
too much salt may damage the arteries
leading to the brain.
At first, it may cause a slight reduction in
the amount of blood reaching the brain. This
may lead to dementia (known as vascular
dementia).
With this condition the cells in the brain don't
work as well as they should because they are
not receiving enough oxygen and nutrients.
However, lowering blood pressure may help to
alleviate some of the problems and reduce the
risk of greater damage.
If you continue to eat too much salt then,
over time, the damage caused by the extra
blood pressure may become so severe that the
arteries burst or become completely clogged.
If this happens, then the part of the brain
that was receiving the blood no longer gets the
oxygen and nutrients it needs and dies. The
result is a stroke, where you lose the ability to
do the things that part of the brain used to
control.
The best way to prevent a stroke is to stop the
arteries becoming damaged. And one of the
best ways of doing this is keep your blood
pressure down by eating less salt.