Salt and Hypertension - What's the Connection?

Most of use salt everyday, without even thinking about it. We love salt on vegetables, in soup, on French fries, and on our Meat!  But now we have now been educated on how dangerous salt is for us so we need to rethink this. 

Recent research has shown the linkage between salt intake and blood pressure regulation. Salt is responsible for water regulation in the body. It is taken up by the gastro-intestinal (GI) tract and, in large part, excreted by the kidneys. However, salt is also stored in cells and in the interstitium, the area between cells in the body. Research has now shown that a high-salt diet in rats leads to the accumulation of salt in the interstitium in the skin. This process is carefully regulated by special white blood cells, the macrophages.

In those macrophages, the scientists found a gene regulator (transcription factor) called TonEBP (tonicity-responsible enhancer binding protein). TonEBP is activated in these cells in response to high salt and turns on a gene (VEGF-C - vascular endothelial growth factor C) that controls the production of lymphatic blood vessels. With high-salt diet the lymphatic vessels increase. The researchers found that when these macrophages are depleted or if the receptor for VEGF-C is absent, the animals are not able to "store their salt" and become hypertensive.

None of us want to deliberately cause our bodies stress, so we need to cut back on the salt and find alternate means of flavoring our food.

But can food have taste without salt?

And the answer is yes! The key to achieving great taste without salt is using herbs and spices in lieu of salt.Most people don't know all the ins and outs of expertly using spices and herbs to best flavor food so here are a few tips about how to season what food with what spices and herbs.

• With soup use bay leaves, chervil, tarragon, parsley, savory, and rosemary. 
• Garlic, oregano, savory, rosemary, and sage work well with poultry. 
• Bay leaves, chives, cloves, cumin, garlic, hot pepper, majoram, rosemary, and savory work well with beef. 
• Pork jives well with coriander, cumin, garlic, ginger, hot pepper, pepper, sage, savory, and thyme. 
• Cheese tastes best with basil, chervil, chives, curry, dill, fennel, garlic chives, marjoram, oregano, parsley, sage, thyme. 

• Vegetables are well seasoned with basil, chervil, chives, dill, tarragon, marjoram, mint, parsley, pepper, thyme. 
• Salads are excellently seasoned with basil, chives, tarragon, garlic chives, parsley, and sorrel.

As you see, it's not completely impossible to season food without salt.

If salt is an issue for you, you should definitely try out some of these tips and tricks to season your food with herbs and spices. Chances are they'll taste better anyway! Herbs and spices can be daunting at first and so many people just avoid using them all together. Once you know some of the basics however you can get started on creating culinary masterpieces without salt!