Why do low-salt diets often fail to sufficiently lower BP?
Some doctors are led to believe salt is not a major cause of HTN based on their clinical experience. When doctors encourage their patients to reduce dietary salt they often find that most of their patients experience little or no drop in BP. Of course, most patients who are told by their doctors to reduce salt intake do not actually reduce their salt intake very much because many high-salt foods do not taste particularly salty and they are not given sufficient dietary counseling to achieve a significant drop in salt intake. For example, bread has about double, and corn flakes about triple the salt content of potato chips [on a Na/kcal basis] but most people would guess that the chips are higher in salt than the bread or cereal. In addition, since no more 15 to 25% of the salt in a typical patients diet is added at home, even patients who try hard to comply often are not successful in cutting salt intake by even 30%. This type of modest reduction in salt intake alone is generally not en
