From John Ray's shorter notes




May 13, 2024

Salt may increase risk of stomach cancer by 40%, study suggests

Groan! Another witless attack on salt below. The journal article is here:
I have written previously on the salt phobia here:
And here:
And here:
And for what it is worth, I have always been a keen salt user but I had a gastroscopy recently which showed my stomach to be completely notmal, which is pretty good for an 80-year-old guy.

OK. On to the latest bit of nonsense. Once again it was an extreme-groups analysis in which they had to throw away half of their data to find something to talk about. So it seems probable that there was in fact NO significant linear relationship between illness and salt consupption.

And it's almost amusing that they found the association only with REPORTS of salt usage not with an estimate of actual salt usage. Bleah!

The one undisputable finding of salt research is that LOW salt can kill you. There is even a name for that: Hyponatremia



A new study might make you think twice before reaching for the salt shaker at your next meal.

Nutritionists from the Center for Public Health at the University of Vienna discovered that people from the UK who added salt to most of their meals were 41 percent more likely to develop stomach cancer than those who used the topping sparingly.

Previous studies in China, Japan and Korea have linked a salty diet to stomach cancer - but this is one of the first to show the link in Westerners.

Though the Austrian study was merely observational, older studies have suggested that excess salt might erode the protective coating on the stomach, causing damage to the tissue there and leading to cancerous mutations.