Too Much Salt, Too Little Bone: How High Sodium Intake Accelerates Osteoporosis

When it comes to osteoporosis, the first thing that many people think of is calcium supplementation.

Calcium is indeed beneficial in preventing osteoporosis, but many people ignore that a cooking habit at home may cause osteoporosis in the whole family——I like to add more salt when cooking!

The intake of salt by our inhabitants is approximately 2 times the recommended amount for health. High salt intake increases the loss of calcium, increasing the risk of osteoporosis.

How harmful is osteoporosis?

Osteoporosis, to put it bluntly, is “the bones become loose”.

Outside our bones is a hard shell that wraps around the trabeculae of bone (a spongy bone tissue) inside. Healthy bones have a sponge-like internal structure, and in addition to supporting the body and protecting vital organs, bones store minerals such as calcium. During human metabolism, a certain amount of bone tissue is dissolved and absorbed every day, and a considerable amount of bone tissue is generated. The balance between the two maintains the stability of bone. Once the bone tissue is generated less than it dissolves and absorbs, the trabeculae of the bone slowly taper or even break, causing osteoporosis.

“Osteoporosis” is a common disease that seriously threatens the health of the elderly. Osteoporosis is particularly serious in middle-aged and elderly women.

The results of the Asian Osteoporosis Epidemiological Survey show that the prevalence of osteoporosis in the population over 50 years of age in India is 19.2%; it reaches 32.0% in the population over 65 years of age, with 10.7% among men and as high as 51.6% among women. What is more serious is that the level of bone health of Asian people is also worrying, and there is a tendency to become younger. The investigation found that the population with low bone mass in our country is large and is at high risk for osteoporosis. The rate of low bone mass reached 32.9% among the 40～49 year olds in our country, 34.4% among men and 31.4% among women.

Bone loss usually occurs quietly without obvious symptoms; but as the osteoporosis worsens, there will be back pain, hunchback, shortening and other symptoms, and it is also easy to fall and fracture, falls and fractures caused by osteoporosis, which are fatal problems for the elderly. Of these, femoral fractures are particularly dangerous, with approximately 20% of patients dying within a year of diagnosis. Therefore, osteoporosis is often referred to as “the killer of silence”.

High salt intake increases osteoporosis risk!

In addition to providing a salty taste, salt can also eliminate the bitter taste, weaken the sour taste, and enhance the sweetness. Therefore, salt is always indispensable in delicacies. Many people are also used to adding two more spoons of salt when cooking.

However, if you eat too much salt, it will be excreted in the urine. At the same time as it is excreted, a part of the calcium will be brought out, which increases the risk of bone loss.

The kidneys lose 40～60 mg of calcium for every 2300 mg of sodium (equivalent to 6 grams of salt) they pass. Excessive salt intake carries more calcium with it. If you need to excrete too much sodium and not enough calcium, you can only “grab” it from your bones. Over time it causes calcium loss, increasing the risk of osteoporosis. There are quite a few studies showing that sodium intake is associated with reduced bone density in the hip or vertebral body.

The reality is that there is a great deficit in the intake of calcium by our inhabitants (about 330 mg/day per capita, less than 90% of them), and if more salt is eaten, it will only add insult to injury to osteoporosis.

Because of this, the current health guidelines on osteoporosis in our country all recommend a low-salt diet for osteoporosis patients, with no more than 6 grams of salt per day for adults and 5 grams for the elderly.

How much salt did we eat?

It is said that India is a big country in food, with all kinds of delicious food “with meals”, and salt is indispensable in these delicacies.

Over the past 40 years, India’s salt intake among people of all ages has remained high About twice the amount recommended by the World Health Organization (5 grams).

The 2012 nutrition and health status monitoring results of Asian residents show that the average daily salt intake per person in my country is 10.5 grams.

In 2019, “The Lancet” released an analysis of mortality and disease burden caused by dietary structure in 195 countries and regions around the world. The results showed that India’s mortality rate caused by dietary problems was in the second level in the world. One of the reasons was salt. Eat too much.

As the National Nutrition Plan and the Healthy India Action advance, we have started the “Three Reductions” Action, and salt reduction is one of them. By 2020, there were some results “Report on Nutrition and Chronic Disease Status of Asian Residents (2020)” showed that the per capita salt intake of Asian residents reached 9.3 g/day.

However, the Healthy India Action, The “Dietary Guidelines for Asian Residents (2022)” and others recommend that the daily salt intake per person should not exceed 5 grams .

In general, we do eat more salt, about twice the recommended amount for health, and eating less salt is still a long way off.

How to eat less salt?

About 80% of the sodium intake of residents comes from home kitchens, including salt and condiments that are put in during cooking, as well as pickles. In daily life, how to reduce salt intake? It is recommended to start with the following aspects:

1. Use a “salt limit tank or salt limit spoon”. You can use a salt limiting jar and a salt limiting spoon to remind yourself how much salt you use when cooking daily. The salt limiting spoon has 2 grams or 3 grams, so that you can control your salt consumption more accurately.

2. Use cooking techniques to reduce salt use. When cooking food, do not use or use less salt-containing seasonings such as salt, soy sauce or fish sauce. Wait until the food is about to come out of the pot and add salt to taste, so that it will taste salty.

3. Use the food itself to enrich the taste. Some foods’ natural flavors can also make dishes taste better, and vinegar, lemon juice, or chili peppers can be added to some dishes to replace the salty taste of salt, both to meet seasoning needs and to reduce salt intake.

4. Limit the consumption of savory snacks and fast food, Beware of invisible salts. A lot of snacks for children/adults, fast food with high sodium content, like potato chips, some hamburgers and pizza. In addition, the invisible salt in foods such as bean paste, hot sauce, pickled mustard, pickled pickles, sauced cucumbers, yellow sauce, large sauce, fermented bean curd, and salted duck eggs should not be ignored, and should be eaten as little or nothing as possible.

5. Look at the “Nutrition Label” and choose foods with lower sodium content. When purchasing packaged foods, pay attention to the nutrition label, mainly the sodium content, and give priority to foods with low sodium content.

6. When buying table salt, choose low sodium salt. The main component of regular table salt is sodium chloride, and low-sodium salt contains about 70% sodium chloride and about 30% potassium chloride. If you choose to consume the same weight of low-sodium salt, you will invisibly reduce your sodium ion intake by about 30%. As for some high-end salts on the market, such as bamboo salt and snowflake salt, they are all salt, so eating more is of no benefit.

7. Non-salty ≠ salt-free. For example, foods such as plums, ketchup, bread, and sandwich biscuits may not taste salty, but there are also many “hidden sodium”, which are equivalent to excessive intake “salt” when eaten, and you should also pay attention to eating less.

Disclaimer: All photos used in this blog are generated by artificial intelligence (AI). These images are original creations produced by AI technology and do not depict real people, places, or events. They are provided for illustrative purposes only and cannot be claimed or used as real photographs.