Too much salt in your diet can weaken your immune system
Rin mice with a listeria infection,” said study lead author Katarzyna Jobin from the University of Wurzburg.
“We had previously put some of them on a high-salt diet. In the spleen and liver of these animals, we counted 100 to 1,000 times the number of disease-causing pathogens,” Jobin added.
Listeria is a bacteria that are found for instance in contaminated food and can cause fever, vomiting and sepsis. Urinary tract infections also healed much more slowly in laboratory mice fed a highsalt diet.
Sodium chloride also appears to have a negative effect on the human immune system, the study said.“We examined volunteers who consumed six grams of salt in addition to their daily intake, this is roughly the amount contained in two fast-food meals, i.e. two burgers and two portions of French fries,” Kurts said.
After one week, the scientists took blood from participants and examined the granulocytes. The immune cells coped much worse with bacteria after the test participants had started to eat a high-salt diet.
In human volunteers, excessive salt intake also resulted in increased glucocorticoid levels. The bestknown glucocorticoid cortisone is traditionally used to suppress inflammation, according to the study.
“Only through investigations in an entire organism were we able to uncover the complex control circuits that lead from salt intake to this immunodeficiency,” Kurts stressed.