"Salt is the first of all flavors." Without salt, no good chef can make delicious dishes. With more and more delicious food around us, the health risks brought by excessive salt are also increasing.

Too much salt (sodium salt) raises blood pressure, and high blood pressure is the primary risk factor for heart disease and stroke. At the same time, high-sodium diet is a high-risk factor for esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and other diseases.

Eating less salt should become the consensus of health, and the following categories of people should eat less salt.

1. People who often have headaches

A recent study allowed subjects to eat a high-salt, medium-salt, and low-salt diet for 30 days. The results found that people who ate 8 grams of salt a day had more than 1/3 more headaches than those who ate 4 grams of salt. Think about your experience of a sudden headache. Did you put too much vegetable salt that day?

2. People who are prone to edema

The water retention in the human body is closely related to the intake of sodium. Studies have shown that excessive intake of sodium can cause a series of symptoms such as edema, headaches, and abdominal distension. Especially for women, the situation will be more obvious a few days before menstruation.

3. People with bad stomach

Ingesting a large amount of food with high salt content will reduce the viscosity of the protective mucus in the stomach, thereby reducing its protective effect on the stomach wall, making the stomach wall more vulnerable to damage and leading to gastric disease. Long-term large intakes of high-salt foods can also increase the risk of gastric cancer.

4. People with poor skin

Due to the effect of osmotic pressure, when a large amount of salt is taken in, the water in the body will decrease, and the water discharged from the body will increase, which will cause the skin to be dehydrated and not conducive to moisturizing.

5. People with chronic pharyngitis

Excessive salt can increase mucus in the throat and make the throat more cloudy. People who have frequent throat inflammation or cough should reduce their salt intake. Including melon seeds, fried peanuts and other roasted nuts that contain a lot of salt on the surface, you should also eat less.

6. Patients with kidney disease and hypertension

The kidney is the necessary channel for sodium to be excreted from the body, and excessive salt intake will increase the burden on the kidneys. Excessive sodium can also cause high blood pressure. Therefore, people with poor kidneys and hypertension should eat less salt.

#7, people with osteoporosis
There is a saying that goes well: "Eating less salt equals more calcium." When the salt intake is too much, the body will try to excrete the excess sodium, but it will also increase the excretion of urinary calcium. This can aggravate osteoporosis.

So the question is, how can we reduce the salt when we can't control our shaking hands while cooking?

When cooking and preparing food, put less salt and reduce the use of salty sauces and condiments (such as soy sauce, soup or fish sauce).

When cooking, use sour seasonings appropriately to increase your sensitivity to saltiness. At the same time, use less sweet condiments, because the sweetness will mask the saltiness.

Put the salty seasoning at the end. In this way, the seasoning can stay on the surface of the food and reduce the dosage.

Avoid snacks with high salt content and try to choose fresh healthy snacks instead of processed foods.

When using canned or dried vegetables, nuts, and fruits, choose varieties that do not add salt and sugar.

Do not put salt and salty condiments on the table and avoid the habit of adding them.

Read the nutrition label on the food packaging and choose products with low sodium content.