Salt: The Killer in Your Kitchen
Author: Surender Reddy Neravetla, MD, FACS
Published: 2012/03/23 - Updated: 2021/10/02
Category Topic: Disability Publications - Academic Publications
Page Content: Synopsis - Introduction - Main
Synopsis: Salt is permanently disabling or prematurely killing millions of people every year as disclosed in the book Salt Kills. A whopping 56 million Americans suffer from conditions either caused or aggravated by salt intake. And that's not counting the 130 million Americans who are overweight or obese.
Introduction
The title of cardiologist Dr. Surender Neravetla's book tells most of the story: Salt Kills. But that's only if you're lucky. Salt is defined as a crystalline compound, sodium chloride, NaCl, occurring as a mineral, a constituent of seawater, etc., and used for seasoning food, as a preservative, etc.
Main Content
A whopping 56 million Americans suffer from conditions either caused or aggravated by salt intake. And that's not counting the 130 million Americans who are overweight or obese. Those shocking statistics prompted Dr. Neravetla to label salt as Public Enemy Number One.
"We have grown accustomed to salting our food without realizing how dangerous the consequences are," he says. "But salt is permanently disabling or prematurely killing millions and millions of people every year."
Many people know that salt causes high blood pressure, but they don't appreciate just how debilitating high blood pressure can be. In his new book, Dr. Neravetla - Director of Cardiac Surgery at Springfield Regional Medical Center in Ohio - explains in easy-to-understand language how high blood pressure silently inflicts damage on multiple organ systems, including the heart. That damage is often irreversible. Enlarged hearts, for example, do not tend to shrink or get better. Instead, they lead to heart failure.
The damage caused by the simple consumption of salt, however, doesn't stop there. Salt Kills points to research data that shows how shaking that salt also significantly contributes to:
- Dementia
- Asthma
- Osteoporosis
- Obesity
- Stomach cancer
Most people don't realize how bad salt is for them. This is the first book that provides an in-depth explanation.
Dr. Neravetla began to look into the dangers of salt consumption after visiting his parents in India. Even though their typical diets include no animal protein, virtually every single member of his family over the age of 50 suffered from very high blood pressure. Since they ate no animal fat, that couldn't be the problem, he realized. But what was causing their cardiovascular problems along with a host of other related diseases
The more he dove into the research, the more he realized that eating salty foods had triggered their conditions. No wonder so many of the heart patients upon whom he had already performed surgery ended up back on his operating table. Worse, while he could save many lives, he couldn't improve the quality of those lives already debilitated by disease.
"We simply have to place a much stronger, higher priority on prevention than on treatment," says Dr. Neravetla. "And since our salt habit is our number one preventable health problem, by far the most important and urgent change we need to make in our diet in order to improve our health is to put down the salt shaker." It's never too late to stop this insidious habit. Salt Kills should help convince people to do just that."
Salt Kills
Author: Surender Reddy Neravetla, MD, FACS with Shantanu Reddy Neravetla, MD
ISBN: 978-1-938009-00-6 (full-color) $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-938009-01-3 (black & white) $14.99
ISBN: 978-1-938009-02-0 (e-book) $8.99
6" x 9"
119 pages
Attribution/Source(s): This quality-reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by Surender Reddy Neravetla, MD, FACS and published on 2012/03/23, this content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity.