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The role of salt in health is more complicated than we thought. For healthy individuals, cutting salt out of your diet might be problematic. A new study out this week, “tracked more than 100,000 people from 17 countries over an average of more than three years and found that those who consumed fewer than 3,000 milligrams of sodium a day had a higher risk of death or a serious event such as a heart attack or stroke in that period than those whose intake was estimated at 3,000 to 6,000 milligrams. Risk of death or other major events increased with intake above 6,000 milligrams.” The World Health Organization, U.S. government and American Heart Association all recommend less than 1,500 to 2,300 milligrams. While those on a low-salt diet should continue to keep their sodium low, this new study indicates that the debate is not over about how much is too much when it comes to salt.
Doing exercise may decrease your sense of pain. While just the thought of exercise may be painful for some people, a new study has found that exercise can actually increase your pain tolerance. “Scientists have known that strenuous exercise briefly and acutely dulls pain” by releasing endorphins, but less was known about the long term effects. By studying a group of volunteers who either did or didn’t do exercise over a several week period, researchers found that “the volunteers in the exercise group displayed substantially greater ability to withstand pain. Their pain thresholds had not changed; they began to feel pain at the same point they had before. But their tolerance had risen. Those volunteers whose fitness had increased the most also showed the greatest increase in pain tolerance.”
