Here’s your quick guide to mastering a low sodium diet for your health. Including simple food lists and tips to stay on track while eating out and at home.
Sodium is an electrolyte and mineral essential for life that is naturally occurring in small amounts in many foods including vegetables like celery and beets.
It plays a role in many bodily processes such as regulating blood pressure, nerve transmission, muscle contractions, and maintenance of fluid balances.
Sodium deficiency is rare because it is naturally present within most foods but also because it is commonly added to foods in the form of salt.
Salt and sodium are often used interchangeably, but they are actually different things.
Salt is a mixture of sodium and chloride.
Salt is one of the most common sources of dietary sodium, as it is often added during the cooking or manufacturing process or as a preservation agent. Over 70% of the sodium Americans eat comes from packaged, prepared, and restaurant foods, not the salt shaker (1).
We get into trouble when we intake too much sodium, no matter what form it comes in.
Your kidneys regulate the amount of sodium in your body; if there is too much or you have underlying kidney complications, sodium may build up in your blood leading to a cascade of health problems (2,3).
Sodium is a vital micronutrient beneficial to proper health, but too much sodium in our diet has been linked to health complications such as high blood pressure and heart disease (4).
The majority of people get way too much in their diet, with an average intake of around 3,400 mg per day (4).
The daily recommendation of sodium is less than 2,300 mg per day (5,6).
To put this into perspective, one teaspoon of table salt = 2,300 mg of sodium!
When following this protocol, it's recommended to limit high sodium foods or completely avoid them in order to keep your intake under the recommended level.
Cutting back can feel challenging at first, but it doesn’t have to be. It starts by learning what foods to eat less of and which to stock up on. Plus you'll reap the health benefits of building a healthier diet.
One of the most popular low sodium diets used for heart health is the DASH diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension).
Low sodium diets are commonly prescribed for a variety of conditions because research suggests that restricting sodium intake may help prevent and manage certain medical conditions.
These guidelines are even stricter for people following a cardiac diet or anyone with high blood pressure with experts recommending they may need less than 1,500 mg of sodium a day - this would be considered a low sodium diet (7).
Patients with heart failure or high blood pressure often benefit from a lower intake because sodium can cause water retention, worsening symptoms of hypertension, edema, and fluid build-up (8,9).
Studies suggest that patients with chronic kidney disease also benefit from a low sodium protocol as excess dietary sodium interferes with kidney function, and affects fluid volume, proteinuria, and immunosuppressant therapy (10,11).
Sodium may also affect the development of osteoporosis as increased dietary sodium can lead to calcium deficiency; although we can combat this by eating more potassium-rich foods, a low-sodium protocol is a more sustainable option to protect us from bone loss (12).
A low sodium diet means to ingest no more than 2,300 milligrams (mg) a day of sodium, with the ideal amount being less than 1,500 mg per day for most adults (13).
Start by tracking your current sodium intake by using a nutrition tracking app .
This is an easy way to understand where the majority of your dietary sodium is coming from, where to start making healthy swaps, and to ensure you are staying on top of the recommended guidelines and sticking to a low salt diet overall.
There are multiple ways to track your intake, you can try using a fitness app like the Trifecta App , a food journal, or calculate how many calories you need per day.
Try this free calorie calculator to get your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) in a few minutes: