CDC Sodium Level Associated with Adverse Outcomes

The CDC currently recommends that healthy people under the age of 50 should consume less than 2300mg of sodium per day. For people aged 50 and over, the recommendation is less than 1500 mg/day. However, results of a recent meta-analysis suggest that consuming such low levels of sodium may be harmful. The results showed that consuming 2,645 – 4,945 mg of sodium per day, a range of intake within which the vast majority of people fall, actually results in more favorable health outcomes than the CDC’s current recommendation. The analysis revealed that there is a U-shaped correlation between sodium intake and health outcomes, and when consumption deviated from the 2,645 – 4,945 mg range mortality increased. Thus meaning that both excessively high and low consumption of sodium were associated with reduced survival. “The good news,” said lead author Niels Graudal, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen Hospital in Denmark, “is that around 95% of the global population already consumes within the range we’ve found to generate the least instances of mortality and cardiovascular disease.”