Eating too little salt may increase your risk of a heart attack or stroke claims new research

.
Daily Mail On-Line article:

Eating too LITTLE salt may INCREASE your risk of a heart attack or stroke, claims controversial new research

Wiki Salt

Nutritional heresy strikes back, some quotes:

The research was carried out by investigators at McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences.
They analyzed more than 130,000 people across 49 countries, focusing on whether the relationship between sodium (salt) intake and death, heart disease and stroke differs in people with high blood pressure compared to those with normal blood pressure.
Their findings showed that regardless of whether people have high blood pressure, low-salt intake is linked to a greater incidence of heart attacks, stroke, and deaths compared to average intake.
...

Dr Mente said that this suggests that the majority of individuals in Canada and most countries are consuming the right amount of salt.
He added that targeted salt reduction in those who are most susceptible because of hypertension and high salt consumption may be preferable to a population-wide approach to reducing sodium intake in most countries except those where the average sodium intake is very high, such as parts of central Asia or China.

He added that what is now generally recommended as a healthy daily ceiling for sodium consumption appears to be set too low, regardless of a person's blood pressure level.
'Low sodium intake reduces blood pressure modestly, compared to average intake, but low sodium intake also has other effects, including adverse elevations of certain hormones which may outweigh any benefits,' Dr Mente said.

'The key question is not whether blood pressure is lower with very low salt intake, instead it is whether it improves health.'

Dr Martin O'Donnell, a co-author on the study and an associate clinical professor at McMaster University and National University of Ireland Galway, said: 'This study adds to our understanding of the relationship between salt intake and health, and questions the appropriateness of current guidelines that recommend low sodium intake in the entire population.'

The study was funded from more than 50 sources, including the PHRI, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

-----

Reference:

A.Mente et al., The Lancet, 20/05/2016, "Associations of urinary sodium excretion with cardiovascular events in individuals with and without hypertension: a pooled analysis of data from four studies"


Please note that the medical authorities have again been caught issuing inaccurate, perhaps harmful nutritional guidelines for half a century based on what appears to be the "treating the numbers" paradigm and experts' opinions rather than based on science. Is nobody responsible for the misconduct?