People who seem to need another reason to put down the salt shaker will not have to wait any longer. CBS reports on Saturday that according to three recently published studies, a diet that’s high in salt creates a risk of developing autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
Results in mice and human cells show that salt can bring about the production of aggressive cells that play a role in autoimmune disease development according to two of the studies conducted.
An additional study determined that mice on high salt diets tend to develop a type of disease similar to multiple sclerosis.
“It’s premature to say ‘You shouldn’t eat salt because you’ll get an autoimmune disease,’” study co-author Aviv Regev of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology states. “We’re putting forth an interesting hypothesis; a connection between salt and autoimmunity that must now be tested through careful epidemiological studies in humans.”
Your body's immune system protects you from disease and infection. But if you have an autoimmune disease, your immune system attacks healthy cells in your body by mistake. Autoimmune diseases can affect many parts of the body.
Vijay Kuchroo, author and co-director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston states, “It’s not just salt, of course. Salt could be one more thing on the list of predisposing environmental factors that may promote the development of autoimmunity.”
Hopefully the results of these studies make the shaker feel a little heavier and folks cut back on their salt intake.
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