Chronic Kidney Disease Caused By Common Seasoning

A seemingly small habit—adding a common seasoning to our food—might have terrible implications for our kidney health.

In fact, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open, it can increase your risk of chronic kidney disease (CKD) by a terrifying 11%.

Worst of all, most of us do this all the time.

The study was carried out on a grand scale, involving more than 465,000 participants from the UK Biobank. These participants, aged between 37 and 73, were initially free of CKD.

Their health and lifestyle were tracked from 2006 to 2023.

The focus was on their self-reported frequency of adding salt to food, categorized into four groups: never or rarely, sometimes, usually, and always.

The results were telling. Over an average follow-up period of about 11.8 years, 22,031 incidents of CKD were reported. What stood out was the clear link between the frequency of adding salt to food and the increased risk of developing CKD.

1. Those who sometimes added salt had a 4% higher risk, those who usually did so had a 7% higher risk, and those who always added salt saw their risk jump by 11% compared to those who never or rarely added salt.

2. This association held even after adjusting for various factors like age, sex, ethnicity, body mass index, smoking, and alcohol consumption.

Interestingly, the researchers also discovered that the associations were stronger among participants with higher baseline kidney function, lower body mass index, or lower levels of physical activity.

But if you already suffer CKD, putting down the salt shaker is not enough.

Fortunately, thousands of readers have already reversed their CKD by making the simple lifestyle changes explained here…