We used to say, without thinking, “Pass the Salt, please.” But that was before before science discovered that Sodium Chloride increases your blood pressure and increases your risk of heart disease and stroke. Now, researchers have determined that too much Salt can weaken your immune system – a critical consideration in the COVID-19 era…
COVID-19 patients with weakened immune systems are more likely
to suffer more serious symptoms, including pneumonia.
Folks who don’t suffer from a weak immune system or compromised pulmonary function will probably suffer the least serious symptoms of COVID-19 if and when they get it. It just stands to reason. The most at risk demographics are the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. So news that excess Salt consumption can compromise your immune system comes at an important time for us all.
What they did
Researchers at the University of Bonn (UB) in Germany recently ran experiments designed to demonstrate the effects of a high Salt diet. First, they tried it on mice. Then they tried it on humans.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says the maximum amount of Salt adults should consume each day is 5 grams, which is equivalent to a level teaspoon. However, many of consume much more Salt than that. The UB team had volunteer subjects consume 6 grams of Salt in addition to their usual daily intake and examined their blood after a week on that regimen.
“We examined volunteers who consumed six grams of salt in addition to their daily intake,” says Dr. Christian Kurts. “This is roughly the amount contained in two fast food meals, i.e. two burgers and two portions of French fries.”
What they found
Granulocytes are scavenger cells that feast mainly on bacteria. If they don’t do their job efficiently, bacteria can take hold causing infections to become more severe. Too much Salt in your diet flips a switch in the kidneys that turns on or turns up the Salt excretion process. But it also causes the kidneys to excrete a substance that inhibits granulocyte activity.
“We were able to show this in mice with a listeria infection,” explains Dr. Katarzyna Jobin, Senior Author of the study report. “We had previously put some of them on a high-salt diet. In the spleen and liver of these animals we counted 100 to 1,000 times the number of disease-causing pathogens.”
In the human study, subjects were also seen to cope much less successfully with bacterial infections after a week on the high Salt regime.
The takeaway
“We have now been able to prove for the first time that excessive salt intake also significantly weakens an important arm of the immune system,” explains Kurts.
While bacterial and viral infections are two separate and different conditions, pneumonia – a mortal danger to COVID-19 sufferers – is likely to hit patients with compromised immune systems harder than it does those with stronger immunity responses. In many cases which result in death, it’s the pneumonia that is responsible, not the virus directly.
My take
Once a person gets into, or past mid life, they need all the help they can get to ward off infections and chronic diseases. Some of the most serious of those are heart disease and stroke, both of which are exacerbated by excess Salt intake. But that’s all aside from the Bonn study’s findings that our immune systems can be seriously compromised by excess Salt intake making us prey to many other ills that did not bother us as much in our younger years, when we were stronger overall.
If helping to keep my immune system healthy is as easy as shunning excess Salt, I’m all for reducing my intake.
~ Maggie J.