Does High-Salt Diet Combat Infections?

Does high-salt diet combat infections?

Scientists at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville have discovered that a high salt diet may be useful in fighting infections. When researchers were studying mice, they noticed that there was an unusually high content of sodium chloride near the mouse’s wounded area. They hypothesize that the body pushes salt to wounded areas to fight against any invading pathogens. As they conducted more studies and looked further in detail if the sodium chloride is actually doing as much good as they thought, they turned to macrophages for the answer. They cultured these macrophages which are immune cells that kill off pathogens and they do so by releasing microbe-slaying molecules that are called reactive oxygen species. They sprinkled salt on the immune cells and waited for them to grow in the sodium chloride solution. Researches saw that the immune cells with a high concentration of NaCl produced significantly more microbicidal molecules than those who grew in a cultured medium of no salt, allowing these immune cells to kill off more pathogens.

Despite all the talk about how bad salt is for our bodies in abundance, it is important to know that there isn’t one side to everything. Just because salt can be harmful to our bodies is consumed too much doesn’t mean that it can’t be beneficial if used the right way by our bodies. It is important for such research to be found because salt is a product that we all deal with daily. As we know too much salt can cause high blood pressure and even cardiovascular disease, so we have all been told to stay away from high-salt diets. However, now we have learned that maybe salt isn’t so bad for us when we are trying to fight infections. Although we are not necessarily encouraged to go on a high-salt diet when we fight infections because the