bunrab | Entries tagged with sodium

Sodium, Potassium Intake Tied to Heart Disease
Study finds 24% greater risk per unit increase in salt-to-mineral ratio

MONDAY, Jan. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Too much sodium and too little potassium in one's diet may increase one's risk of cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests.

The findings, based on a long-term analysis by the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of almost 3,000 people with pre-hypertension, also suggests that increasing potassium consumption along with the common wisdom of lowering one's salt intake may reverse the risk.

Researchers found that for people with high normal blood pressure levels (120 to 139/80 to 89 mmHg), every unit increase in the person's sodium-to-potassium ratio raised his or her chance of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent.

The findings were published in the Jan. 12 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

From a much longer list of supposedly healthy soups, I've culled down the ones that are less than 400 mg of sodium per serving, so that you can have crackers or half a grilled cheese sandwich with your soup:

Canned Soups (per 1-cup serving)

Brand and Variety	Calories	Fat (g)	Protein (g)	Fiber (g)	Sodium (mg)
Pritikin, Chicken with Pasta	60	0.5	3	2	290
Pritikin, Chicken and Rice	80	1	3	0	290
Pritikin, Hearty Vegetable	80	0	3	2	290
Pritikin, Lentil	130	0	9	6	290

Cups and Microwavable Soup Bowls (per 1-cup serving)

Brand and Variety	Calories	Fat (g)	Protein (g)	Fiber (g)	Sodium (mg)
Healthy Valley Fat Free, Chicken Noodle Vegetable	100	0	5	3	390
Healthy Valley Fat Free, Creamy Potato Broccoli	80	0	3	4	390
Healthy Valley Fat Free, Garden Split Pea	110	0	7	4	290
Healthy Valley Fat Free, Spicy Black Bean Couscous	130	0	6	5	290
Healthy Valley Fat Free, Zesty Black Bean Rice	100	0	5	4	320

Dried Soups (per 1-cup serving) (only one of these was under 400, so I'm not going to bother making a table)
Tasty Adventure, Minestrone 160 cal, 0.5 g fat, 10 g protein, 9 g fiber, 250 mg sodium

We had tickets to see Gaelic Storm at the Recher Theater in Towson (center north area of the Baltimore Beltway, home of Towson State University, about 20 minutes from our house) this evening. We went. "Doors open at 7" so we got there a couple minutes before 7. Well, first, we went in - and there were no seats. It's just a big open area with a stage at one end and bars on three sides. Not even folding chairs. Not even bar stools at the bars. So I guess one is supposed to treat it as a bar that happens to have entertainment - but that's not what we expected when we bought *tickets* - not something bars usually sell - to a place called a *theater*. So now we know: always ask first if the theater has seats. Then. We waited. Since we didn't feel like drinking alcohol, there was nothing to do but wait. No one had any idea of when the band would actually come on. Finally sometime after 8 p.m. and heading toward 8:30, we decided we had been standing around watching other people drink for long enough, and we left. Not having seen nor heard the band. We asked for a refund but they wouldn't give us one. Well. Guess where's one place we won't be going again no matter WHO is playing?

We did eat supper in Towson after that. We ate at a sushi place - apparently Towson has some sort of municipal ordinance that says that any restaurant MUST include a sushi bar. This particular one was called Olive & Sesame, which sounds more Middle Eastern to me. But it served Chinese food as well as sushi, and, in particular, what made us choose it even after discovering that it was not Middle Eastern, was that they had a section of the menu devoted to what they called "Revolution Diet" - steamed food with no salt, sugar, or cornstarch, served with sauces on the side so that one could control how little or how much sauce to add. So I got shrimp and veggies, with a Szechwan (Sechuan, whatever) sauce, and used only a minute amount of it, and thus had almost no sodium at all other than that which occurs naturally in shrimp. Great idea!

But boo on the Recher "Theater." Boo hiss.

Current Mood: disgruntled

I apologize for not posting for a bit. My spouse,

squirrel_magnet, was out of town attending to his father, who is 92 and has lung cancer. Luckily, the prognosis has improved, and so the Squirrel is back home for a while. I was taking care of the chores that he normally does, and not doing that terrific a job of it. Feeding the cats and cleaning their litter box involves going down to the basement - and then coming back up the stairs, not something I do enthusiastically. Also, the cats do not like the way I feed them, and I use the wrong stance when cleaning the litter box, or something - anyway, they disapprove. And there's other stuff I'm not real good at - carrying out the recycling, taking out garbage, stuff like that. The cats are glad to have S back doing his chores, and I am too - and glad he's back for many other reasons, of course.

I wanted to mention a website I recently found: http://www.sparkpeople.com . It's mainly a site for helping people lose weight - - but their food tracking feature also is very good for tracking sodium intake. It brought me up short, because when I started logging everything I eat, I saw how careless I had been getting about sodium in restaurant food, and seeing it adding up like that brought me back to my senses; I have been making much better choices this week, after a week of seeing that my intake came to 2200-2500 on some days; now I've got it back down to 1500-1800 milligrams of sodium per day. It's completely free to register at the site. There are a bunch of interesting features, a huge recipe database, and lots of forums/bulletin boards/communities within the site, including teams for hypertension, lower salt intake, heart health, animal lovers, people over 50, and just about every other demographic slice you might think of. I'm actually having fun with it!

It's summer! If you're taking diuretics, don't forget that they can make you more sensitive to sunburn.

The All-New Bunrab

formerly on bunrab.livejournal.com

Entries tagged with sodium

From the "Well, duh" department:

(no subject)

Well, that was a learning experience.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

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