Losing Weight, Less Salt Lower Blood Pressure But Keeping Pounds Off, Reducing Salt In Foods Essential

Losing 10 pounds and modestly cutting salt intake significantly lowered the risk of heart attacks and strokes in people with blood pressure only slightly above normal - a group that includes 80 million Americans.

The benefits of lowering blood pressure are well known in people with hypertension, or blood pressure higher than 140 millimeters over 90. The picture has been less clear for those with blood pressure lower than that but still above the normal 120 over 80.

A study reported Wednesday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting showed that a 10-pound weight loss and a 20 percent to 25 percent reduction in salt intake produced a drop of about 2 millimeters in both the top and bottom blood-pressure numbers.

That may sound small, but if that were achieved throughout the American population, it would save tens of thousands of lives, said the study’s author, Dr. Paul Whelton of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

The study used personal counseling to help 2,382 overweight men and women lose weight and eat less salt. After six months, the researchers measured a 2-millimeter drop in blood pressure.

One problem, though, was that the participants did not maintain their weight loss, salt reduction and blood pressure drop over the three-year course of the study. By the end of the study, the blood pressure drop was only 1 millimeter, and the average weight loss 4-5 pounds, Whelton said.

Whelton’s conclusion is that watching one’s diet over the long term and keeping blood pressure down will require deeper changes in the way Americans live and eat.

“We have to work with manufacturers to lower sodium. Eighty percent of our sodium comes from processed foods,” not from the salt shaker on the dinner table, Whelton said. The development of more low-fat foods is also important, he said, as well as “making it easier and fun for us to get more exercise.”

Rose Stamler, a professor of epidemiology at Northwestern University, said that lowering the blood pressure of all Americans by 2 millimeters would produce about a 4 percent drop in the estimated 500,000 heart attack deaths each year, for a savings of about 20,000 lives.

It would also lead to a 6 percent reduction in the 150,000 deaths a year from strokes, or about 7,500 lives saved each year.