Your heart is one of the most important muscles in your body. That's why you need to take care of it well. For many years, health advocates and experts suggest to cut back on salt as a way of protecting your heart. However, this new study tells you that there's something more sinister than salt.
The answer is sugar. According to a brand-new study that evaluates the effects of salt and sugar in the body, especially the heart, there's not much evidence that proves salt is indeed the culprit of a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. The decrease in blood pressure is insignificant or it doesn't make a huge difference whether you consume too much salt or not as far as your heart is concerned. In fact, they mention that cutting back salt to below 3 grams may do more harm than good. Salt can be a good resource of sodium, which is also needed to maintain electrolyte imbalance.
It's a whole different scenario when we talk about sugar, especially fructose corn syrup. This is an additive used to sweeten many of the packaged products in the market, from sodas to cereals. By adding only 25% more of your daily recommended calorie intake can already increase your risk of heart disease to as much as 3 times than those who consume less than 10% more. Your blood pressure can also shoot up significantly by increasing your intake of the same artificial sugar to over 74 grams.
Sugar also increases your risk of developing metabolic syndromes, as your body becomes resistant to insulin. Added sugar can increase the level of glucose in the blood even when you're not eating.
It seems like we still have much to learn about food and its effects in the body. Recently, Ohio State University researchers discovered that increasing fat intake doesn't increase saturated fat present in the blood. Rather, the main problem is carbohydrate.
