Salt’s a bad guy, salt’s a good guy…and so the dance continues. For many decades, salt is the first thing on the chopping block for people with high blood pressure.

But is it really an overload of salt that’s to blame?

No, says research out of South Africa, where the incidence of hypertension is almost off the charts. It’s rather lacking another important mineral that balances salt.

For decades, the World Health Organization has stuck by its recommendation that humans consume no more than 4 to 6 grams of salt daily.

However, in a country as densely populated as South Africa, where the mean salt intake is only 7 grams and hypertension cases are still abundant, it looks like the amount of salt consumed may not be the actual problem.

In 2011, JAMA rocked the foundation of all things hypertension when a study it published seemingly lambasted the assault on salt. In the study, researchers found overwhelming evidence that death from stroke and heart attack was far more likely to occur when there is too little salt in the diet than when there is too much.

How can this be? It all has to do with a person’s sensitivity to sodium, which depends highly upon the other side of the see-saw: potassium.

The sodium-potassium relationship has been known for many decades, but the fact that most people are potassium-deficient has only been focused on recently in light of the not-enough-salt controversy.

Potassium is the only mineral that balances sodium in the body. Not having enough potassium causes the sodium sensitivity we talked about above. It can result in high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease, and other conditions- even type 2 diabetes.

Sodium overload is everywhere. It’s in all the packaged food we eat, carbonated beverages, and virtually all processed food that doesn’t come straight from the garden.

But even “healthy” amounts of sodium from salt can cause some people to have high blood pressure if potassium deficiency is present. There’s no counterweight for sodium when this happens.

However, too much potassium can be a problem, too. Before slashing your salt intake and putting yourself at the greater risk as described in the JAMA study referenced earlier, talk to the doctor about first supplementing with potassium at a safe dose and see if the balance can be struck by adding nutrients instead of cutting them.

Now, salt-potassium balancing can be complicated. A much simpler and easier way to lower blood pressure is the use of three easy exercises.

Thousands of readers have used these exercises successfully to bring their blood pressure below 120/80 – often the very first day. Learn more about the easy blood pressure exercises and try them out for yourself here…