Link between salt and auto-immune diseases

"The link between salt and overactive immune cells appears to be a gene known as SGK1, which plays a key role in allowing the body to absorb salt. The more salt you ingest, the more active SGK1 becomes. Kuchroo, along with Aviv Regev, a computational biologist at the Broad Institute in Boston, has found that the gene also has another function: it controls TH17 cells. They theorise that high levels of SGK1 can lead to a flood of TH17, causing the immune system to spin out of control."

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...worse-than-thought-link-to-autoimmune-disease

Thanks I sent the link to a friend who eats incredibly salty.

this part is interesting:

''Last year, scientists from Harvard Medical School and the Raúl Carrea Institute for Neurological Research in Argentina studied salt consumption among 122 patients with multiple sclerosis. They found that those who ate a lot of salt were four times more likely to develop more serious symptoms than those who ate little. The high-salt group also had a threefold greater chance of developing new brain lesions related to the disease.''

salt and junk food are intertwined. This for sure is bad for us. I keep away completly.

I put some salt in my food, as we need some, but sea salt or Hymalayian pink salt, never refined salt.

Fascinating!

@Lady Organic

Junk food, yup it's very bad for you... that's a forgone conclusion really. Nobody can really defend anymore. The occasional once off hotdog or pig out on a huge bag of crisps is fine for a healthy person but more than that everyone knows it's just plain bad. The real issue is education and complacency.

Salt sneaks into people's diets in hidden ways. THose supermarket frozen prepared meals are no.1 culprit. But nobody notices canteen-style prepared meal packs that lots of chain cafes and restaurants use... full of added salt. There in canteen-food to cover up cheap ingredients. Even the "fancy" M&S stuff that your classic middle-class conscientious eater thinks are yummy are full of salt.

In the US and UK we snack way too much on chips and salty things too (I'm guilty myself). My partner is Italian and observing Italian (indeed mediterranean in general) eating patterns they have much healthier attitude to snacking. With a substantial lunch they say you wont need to snack... they're right. My father-in-law eats a plate of al dente pasta (no meat just veg) every other day for lunch, with a salad or lightly grilled meat. Often with a contorno of zuchini or some other grilled veg... all fresh and homecooked. No added salt.

When the moment comes for me and any of my anglo-saxon colleagues and friends to give ourselves a substantial lunchtime feed we'll tuck in with earnest praise into our katsu curries, beef wellingtons and pork pies... the stodginess never really crossing our minds.

Guess my point is culturally getting off high-salt high-impact flavour of stodgy meaty food is hard to untangle from our Anglo-saxon eating culture. We need to teach ourselves to be less salt dependant.

IMHO that means going a little more mediterranean. Not saying they don't use salt but the variety of dishes affords you more opportunities to avoid salt.

I recently cut down on a my diuretic which I was taking because of high BP. I watched my intake of sodium.

I noticed that the less diuretic I took the more pain and problems I have with my digestion. A while ago I upped my diuretic back to where I had been taking it and my pain is virtually gone. Maybe a coincidence?

Yes Manalishi, In Western culture, we flavor with SALT, SUGAR and FAT as opposed to Mediterranean or Indian or Asian cuisines where they flavor with herbs, spices and other plants and very few of what we use. Im completly done with western style diet since 4 years and have been embracing other cultural avenues.

I do not use salt, no fast food, and always check labels. I eat very low sodium.

Lady Organic said:

...we flavor with SALT, SUGAR and FAT as opposed to Mediterranean or Indian or Asian cuisines where they flavor with herbs, spices...

Click to expand...

Well said... we need to spread the word a bit

Here is some more info. Seems that it can create a more pro inflammatory
immune system in days, I wonder about a lifetime.
Old Mike

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/257319.php

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/salt-linked-to-autoimmune-diseases/



more on high salt diet and mice,finally found something

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23467095

appendix th17 and UC,been looking for the reason for the association for a long time.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24666024



th17 cells and uc

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23689808



some salt history

http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/8/2052.full



this history sees to indicate we eat less now than a 100 years ago

http://www.saltinstitute.org/news-articles/history-of-salt-consumption

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26524592




http://www.jci.org/articles/view/81...nt=short_url&utm_medium=pdf&utm_source=impact



http://www.jci.org/articles/view/80...nt=short_url&utm_medium=pdf&utm_source=impact

Interesting, but Crohn's is not an autoimmune disease

This sort of the opposite,of the thread subject.
Extra sodium ions in the skin enhances macrophage killing.
So in might be interesting to know if sodium ions are also stored in the
small intestine tissue. I know sodium ion is also stored extracellular in other tissues such as muscle and possibly some organs.

Or perhaps more interesting if a real high salt diet will increase macrophage
function in crohn's people since killing is deficient.
Then again they have tried to improve immune function in crohns
with mixed results.
Also a higher salt diet like our normal diet can also mess with
gut bacteria and possibly make them go in the wrong direction, so
who knows.


But they also have some mice studies on high salt diet which makes
chemical IBD worse.

Old Mike
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/does-high-salt-diet-combat-infections

but then we get into the immune confusion
https://www.mdc-berlin.de/45157321/en/highlights/archive/2015/mueller