This study dives into what correlation there is between sodium consumption and the health of blood vessels, a major risk for heart disease and stroke. It is a serious scenario—around the world people are doubling recommended salt consumption, and high salt intake has been demonstrated to accelerate destructive processes like atherosclerosis (artery thickening and plugging).
Salt not only raises blood pressure to get into trouble; it can actually trigger inflammation, stress in the cells of blood vessels, and weaken our body’s defenses, speeding the damage in our arteries.
The researchers combined data from many previous studies to see if eating more salt, estimated either by self-reported diet or by special urine tests, causes measurable changes in the walls and flexibility of arteries. They examined three medical markers:
- Carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT): a measure of artery wall thickening
- Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV): the stiffness of the arteries
- Augmentation index (AIx): yet another measure of arterial health
All the studies inferred that, in the short- and mid-term, there’s no visible increased thickening and stiffening of bigger arteries with higher salt intake. This is odd because salt is certainly bad for the heart, but the reason is that such changes in vessels take very long time—years or decades, to develop, and therefore available measurement techniques and study durations may “miss” the effect.
Some seemingly mysterious results, including some studies actually showing slightly better elasticity of arteries with higher salt excretion, could be due to measurement errors, the short duration of the majority of studies, or that those already under risk were instructed to reduce their intake of salt, disrupting the results.
However, researchers point out that salt clearly does raise blood pressure and causes millions of deaths annually through heart attacks and strokes. Even modest reductions in each day’s salt intake on a population level could save tens of thousands of lives every year. The chief take-home message is: although the immediate, tangible impact of salt on large arteries may be long in coming, the net risk is real and dangerous.
Modern science needs more and longer studies to monitor these “slow burns,” but the health advice is already clear: cut back on salt now to protect your heart and blood vessels in the long term. Relying only on quick tests or short studies can severely understate salt’s actual threat.
Full text: Stanisław Surma, Michał Pruc, Łukasz Szarpak, Maciej Banach, 2025, Dietary salt on vascular function: a meta-analysis, Archives of Medical Science, https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/209720.