Cut Salt, Save 500,000 U.S. Lives Over a Decade, Study Finds

By Robert Preidt

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Feb. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Reducing salt in Americans' diets would save hundreds of thousands of lives over 10 years, according to a new study.

Excess salt, the primary source of sodium, contributes to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, the leading killer in the United States.

Immediately reducing people's salt consumption from current levels to the upper limit of the U.S. government guideline -- 2,300 milligrams a day -- would save 500,000 to 850,000 lives over the next decade, largely by reducing heart attacks and strokes, the study found.

Gradually reducing sodium levels in processed or restaurant foods by 4 percent a year for 10 years would still save 280,000 to 500,000 lives over a decade, the researchers concluded.

The average American consumes about 3,500 mg per day, and men tend to ingest much more than that, according to the study, which was published Feb. 11 in the journal Hypertension.

"No matter how we look at it, the story is the same -- there will be huge benefits in reducing sodium," study lead author Pam Coxson, a mathematician at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a university news release.

For the study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought together three groups of scientists who used different computer models to estimate how lowering salt intake would save lives.

All the models showed consistent, substantial benefits if current sodium intake were reduced to a level close to the upper limit of the federal guidelines.

Many people believe that taking the salt shaker off the dinner table will reduce their sodium consumption to a healthy level, but 80 percent of the sodium consumed by Americans comes from processed foods, Coxson noted.

Bread and other cereals account for about one-third of daily sodium intake. Other types of processed foods that have high sodium levels include canned soup and processed meats. Even fresh chicken is sometimes injected with salt solutions before packaging. Restaurant meals are also high in sodium.

In commercial settings, salt is primarily added for flavor and sometimes to preserve foods.

More information

The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute outlines how you can reduce salt in your diet.

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Smokers Die About a Decade Earlier on Average

Jan. 23, 2013 -- Women who smoke are now just as likely to die of lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases as men -- and smokers of both sexes die, on average, about a decade earlier than non-smokers.

These were among the findings from two major studies examining death rate trends among smokers published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

"The studies highlight the fact that cigarette smoking remains a leading cause of death in the U.S.,” says Steven A. Schroeder, MD, who directs the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We tend to think of smoking as a done deal because most upper class, educated people no longer smoke or know people who [no longer] do,” he says. “But it still exerts a huge toll, and the influence of the tobacco companies is still strong.”

Michael J. Thun, MD, of the American Cancer Society, led a study that tracked smoking deaths over three time periods during the last 50 years. He says the new data confirms that women who smoke have the same risk for death as men.

The analysis included about 2.2 million adults who were age 55 and older.

“When women smoke like men, they die like men,” Thun says.

Women started smoking cigarettes in large numbers in the 1960s, about two decades after men had large smoking rates. Smoking rates were among their highest late in the '60s, when around 1 in 3 adult women smoked, according to the CDC.

Thun says it is no accident that this is when tobacco giant Philip Morris introduced its Virginia Slims brand, the first cigarette marketed solely to women.

The study shows a 23-fold increase in the risk of dying from lung cancer among women smokers between1960 and 2000.

“It takes about 50 years for an epidemic to really get going, and we are just beginning to see the impact of the increase in smoking among women during this time period in terms of deaths from smoking,” he says.

In a second analysis, researchers determined that people who smoke into middle age lose about a decade of life to the habit, but smokers who stop before the age of 40 regain most of these lost years.

The researchers examined data on about 200,000 men and women over age 25 interviewed between 1997 and 2004, and identified about 16,000 who had died several years later.

They found that:

Smokers who quit in their mid-30s to mid-40s gained about nine years of life. Those who quit from their mid-40s to mid-50s gained about six. Those who quit later than this, but before age 65, gained about four additional years.Smokers between the ages of 25 to 79 were three times as likely to die as non-smokers in the same age group.People who never smoke are about twice as likely as smokers to live to age 80.

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ADHD Rises by Almost 25% in 1 Decade

Jan. 21, 2013 -- The number of children with ADHD is rising rapidly, according to a study of more than 840,000 California children.

While the research findings echo those of nationwide studies, the new study is stronger than some other studies, says researcher Darios Getahun, MD, PhD, a scientist at Kaiser Permanente Southern California, a large health plan.

"We relied on the clinical diagnosis of ADHD [by doctors] and medication prescriptions rather than teacher or parent report," he says.

From 2001 to 2010, the rate of new cases of doctor-diagnosed ADHD rose from 2.5% to 3.1%, an increase of 24%.

"It's an increase that warrants attention," he says. Growing awareness of the condition is one reason for the rise, he speculates.

The study is published online in JAMA Pediatrics.

ADHD is one of the most common childhood neurobehavioral disorders, according to the CDC.

Children with ADHD have trouble paying attention or act impulsively, or both.

While the American Psychiatric Association estimates that 3% to 7% of school-aged children have ADHD, other studies have found higher rates.

The Kaiser researchers looked at the health records of 842,830 children in the health plan. They ranged from 5 to 11 years old.

Of those, nearly 5%, or 39,200, had an ADHD diagnosis.

When they looked at the rates of a new diagnosis, they found the 24% rise, from 2.5% in 2001 to 3.1% in 2010.

White and African-American children were both more likely to be diagnosed than were Hispanics or Asian-Pacific Islanders.

Typically, more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADHD. In the new study, they found an overall boy-to-girl ratio of 3 to 1, similar to other research.

However, they also found a 90% rise in ADHD in African-American girls.

Growing awareness and cultural norms may help explain the findings, Getahun says.

He says parents, teachers, and doctors are all more aware of the condition.

As for Asian children being less likely to have a diagnosis, Getahun says that could be partly due to the reluctance of some Asian parents to seek out mental health care.

One strength of the new study is the large number of children, says Craig Garfield, MD, a pediatrician at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

He has also studied the rise in ADHD.

"What I would advise parents is that if they notice their child suffering in school or in a situation where they have trouble with attention, to discuss this with their doctor," he says.

The doctor can ask more pointed questions and get input from teachers, he says.

Parents should take away from the study the need to be alert to possible symptoms of ADHD, says Roberto Tuchman, MD, director of the autism and neurodevelopmental program at Miami Children's Hospital Dan Marino Center.

"Parents need to be aware that ADHD is a disorder that can interfere with the development of a child's educational potential," he says.

However, if identified early, treatments can help, he says.

These include medications and educational and behavioral treatments.

"The other side of it is that ADHD can be overdiagnosed as people become more and more aware," he says.

Parents also need to know that ADHD often is accompanied by other problems, Tuchman says, such as learning disabilities.

For those reasons, Tuchman says, a parent who hears a diagnosis of ADHD needs to ask the doctor:

Are you sure this is ADHD?Does my child also have a learning disability or other problem?

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