Salt Stimulates the Brain Cells Just Like Drugs

YEREVAN, AUGUST 1, ARMENPRESS:

Researchers claim that salt is addictive in the same way as cigarettes or hard drugs, with the craving triggering the same genes, brain cells and brain connections.

The finding could help explain why many find it so hard to cut back on salt, despite warnings about dangers to blood pressure and heart health. For the study, Australian and American scientists kept some mice on low-salt diets and gave others a salt drip.

Doctors On-line reports that activity in the mice's brains was then compared with that in mice fed normally. They also studied the brains of mice that had been starved of salt for three days and then given salty water to drink freely.

When the rodents were in need of salt, brain cells made proteins more usually linked to addiction to substances such as heroin, cocaine and nicotine. The study also revealed that after salt was taken, the brain believes it has received its fix well before it should be physically possible. In other words, the changes caused by salt cravings disappeared well before the salt could have left the gut, entered the blood and got to the brain. Professor Derek Denton of the University of Melbourne says "it is an evolutionary mechanism of high survival value, because when an animal is depleted of water or salt it can drink what it needs in five to ten minutes and get out which makes it less susceptible to predators".