Tangential: I think it should be "we investigate" instead of "we investigating" in the first paragraph of the abstract? How can such an awful mistaken use of grammar pass peer-review and other processes that precede publishing? Or am I the one who is mistaken?
EDIT: this is an "early view" of the paper, before it gets published. No idea about the implications of that.
Their English is better than my non-existant Chinese.
The Affiliations where:
1. The Brain Science Center, Beijing Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.
2. Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China.
3. Center on Translational Neuroscience, College of Life & Environmental Science, Minzu University of China, Beijing, China.
4. Department of Biomedical Informatics, Center for Noncoding RNA Medicine, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
5. School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China.
Should we take this with a grain of sodium chloride instead?
Sure, but the publisher is Wiley (from USA), and the journal is the British Journal of Pharmacology. Seems like these entities should provide someone to proofread the paper before it gets publicized in any way?
In my experience, even prestigious journals such as Nature Communications or Genome Biology are not willing to spend resources on professional editing. Most of the effort is passed onto reviewers.
Only Nature, Science, Cell and a few high-end sister journals really put an effort proofreading, editing and adapting figures to the general look and feel of the journal.
The people behind this seem to be working in Beijing, so there's a possibility English isn't the first language they're using. I don't want to make assumptions, just give the benefit of the doubt. This is science, not literature - there could still be value here. Or not. I just wouldn't discount it for a typo.
Rutin is basically an antioxidant that contains quercetin.
Yet another antioxidant which “prolongs” lifespan by a negligible percentage compared to other antioxidants and mice on a keto diet which avoid the oxidative stress from carbs in the first place.
It seems we always hit a limit to lifespan studies.
Unless we are able to modify the organs themselves, including the insulin response and mTOR, no single substance will ever prolong lifespan in a significant way.
You clearly didn't follow geroprotectors advances.
Classical antioxidants are weak that's for sure. Mitochondrial targeted antioxidants are one millionth time more potent (this is NOT an exageration), as such they can double lifespan and eliminate entire classes of diseases such as Alzeihmer and Parkinson.
Only a small minority of people are erudite in geroprotectors today and as such only this small minority will be part of the first generation to have significantly better ageing.
There are many but the most studied one is skq1.
It is marketed as eye drops for slowing age related eye diseases such as macular degeneration. It is also marketed as cosmetics to be applied on the skin as an anti wrinkle agent.
Of course those uses are not enough geroprotective.
The oral pill is in the work and will very probably be the breakthrough of the century though, it will take ~a decade before being FDA approved.
However indeed the currently marketed cosmetics are the same active substance and can be off-label ingested orally (or sublingually). Anybody doing that should read the pubmed papers about Skq1 in order to make an informed decision.
The other contender is Fullerene C60 which is bioavailable when diluted in oil (e.g olive oil) however it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier and hence won't stop your current neurodegeneration.
Theres lots of info about C60 on Longecity but I think that forum is slowly dying now.
Could you share where you're reading info about SkQ1? Is it another life extension forum?
MitoQ is in the same class as SkQ1 and is already marketed as a pill. Both are made up of an antioxidant anion and a phosphonium cation for getting into mitochondria. However, a rare controlled study against using a random inert anion with the same mitochondrial penetrator shows similar effects as the purported geroprotectors [1] suggesting that nobody has any idea how these molecules work to the extent they work at all. But it’s definitely an interesting area of research.
I agree. Lots of studies seem focused on slightly slowing the accumulation of damage in our bodies over time, but this is a battle that can only be lost. Entropy always wins. What we need is tech to repair our bodies. The most promising candidate (in my uneducated opinion) is using gene editing to correct the mutations that accumulate in our genomes.
> It has been widely found that the volume of the brain and/or its weight declines with age at a rate of around 5% per decade after age 401 with the actual rate of decline possibly increasing with age particularly over age 70.
I feel like that's probably a big one without getting into the functional changes.
And just adding a bunch of neurons would probably be like giving your computer a new HDD. I think that the argument is about how it's important to preserve the information contained within the old neurons somehow.
interesting to come across Quercetin, which was also trumpeted as the wonder supplement for minimizing ill effects of diseases like Covid19
See the Zstack prophylactic protocol from Dr Zelenko, where he suggests this as the better alternative to his earlier recommendation, HCQ, to act as an ionophore for Zinc.
If we do increase lifespan or isn’t going to be because we found a magic pill, it will be because we found a few metrics we can provide external feedback to control an important variable.
There was a study that claimed to prove that antioxidants can prevent the stress that causes sleep deprivation to be fatal, and that this fundamentally originates in the digestive system across quite different species.
They didn't extend lifespan compared to baseline, but they restored baseline lifespan to sleep deprived subjects by feeding them various substances.
They tried a bunch of antioxidants, the most readily available one was melatonin, I think, but it's not clear to me what it all means.
If mice and fruit flies can live without sleep, would it work for humans? Do antioxidants help humans with sleep disorders?
All I know is that over the counter melatonin does not seem to work any miracles for me. I have no idea if it would make me capable of staying awake 24/7 if forced.
Lifespan is a separate issue, but you could look at eliminating sleep, if possible, as living 1/3 (or more) longer.
What kind of miracles do you expect from melatonin?
To make you fall asleep?
Do not take more than 450micro grams, over the counter contains waaay to much melatonin.
Melatonin is an antioxidant, but it is not a miracle hormone.
It just signals the absence of light. Owls and other nocturnal animals get wide awake in the presence of melatonin, humans and diurnal animals get sleepy.
I don't expect anything in particular. As I wrote, I've tried it and it doesn't do anything amazing. I had previously tried it on recommendation from a sleep specialist before I read about the idea that it reverses metabolic damage from sleep deprivation.
Over the counter supplements usually seem to have way too large a dose, and I've read they can be very inconsistent too.
The point is, I read this amazing study, and it may be somehow incorrect or even fraudulent, but it is what it is. Sleep deprivation kills. The claim is that via, not one, but any of several substances, that can be reversed, at least in lab insects/animals.
I definitely am not advising anyone take any supplements. I want to clearly state that I don't experience any particular beneficial effects from anything I've tried.
I just am saying that uncovering the reason why sleep is needed has to have world changing applications, or end up as a spectacular debunking, it seems to me.
I understand and I know certain people use mega-dosages(10-15 miligrams) to protect themselves from neurotoxicity of certain drugs, but I'm sure that's just bro-science.
I would steer away from melatonin as a supplement for anything other than sleep, because it is a powerful hormone and while the science is lacking, it's better not to mess with such a powerful and important hormone.
I really wish for reform in regulation, so that quality and dosage of over the counter supplements could be trusted. I haven't heard of any groundswell of support for that, though. People say that it's a problem with cannabis supplements too.
There was a MIT study that the optimal doaage for sleep is around 300mcg.
The body produces about 30mcg of melatonin afik, and the oral bioavailability of melatonin is about 10% so, the math works out.
More might produce excessive grogginess after you wake up, and in my experience it leads to fast tolerance -- so it doesn't work; 300-450mcg works in perpetuity for me.
The precise dose that works for you may vary, but a significant sign you've taken too much is feeling really tired and groggy the following day. For me up to about 1mg seems to work fine but I've not used it enough to see how well it works below that.
Do you have a reference on this? It'd be quite interesting to read further on why studies using mice are often poor predictors of human reactions to exposure.
It showed that of the most-cited animal studies in prestigious scientific journals, such as Nature and Cell, only 37% were replicated in subsequent human randomised trials and 18% were contradicted in human trials. It is safe to assume that less-cited animal studies in lesser journals would have an even lower strike rate.
Not sure why that is higher, but it is phrased weird.
Source? It would be nice to scope such vague statements. Some kind of pharmaceutical mechanism of action ~totally transpose to the human while some other do not at all, it's heavily topic dependent.
For example mitochondrial targeted antioxidant are specy agnostic.
Would also like some source/info on this, seems suspicious, like something that anti-cruelty organizations came up with and people are mindlessly believing and repeating...
A review [0] found that only 37% of research on mice translate in humans.
But as someone interested in neurodegenerative diseases I can only recall that there were ~2500 clinical trials done on Alzheimer because of interesting results in mice and ... not a single one was effective in humans.
For less investigated diseases such as ALS or Parkinson it's about 700 trials without any success.
Both Fullerene C60 and SkQ1 can double lifespan in mice.
Everybody should take (at his own risk) SkQ1, it's gonna create a new generation of temporally old but physically young people.
SKQ1 being considered non toxic and properly eliminated by the body and given it's large (>150 studies) body of evidence showing revolutionar anti ageing (totally prevent Alzeihmer, Parkinson), to me the risk/benefit cost is a no brainer.
In addition to it, mexidol can be a nice augmentation.
Of course it's only a part of the complete anti ageing solution, see also:
We should investigate the benefits of sodium as well. Sodium is vitally important for many bodily function and is a very misunderstood nutrient.
Historically people consumed much more salt, and don't give me the "people used to die when they were 35" nonsense. There is a big difference between being kicked by a horse vs dying of a stroke.
You can still buy salt beef. It usually comes in a plastic tub. You must soak it in water before cooking in order to remove most of the salt otherwise it is inedible.
I love sodium and virtually never heard of this "sodium is the devil" narrative before! (I know right, was I living in a cave?) Anyway a few weeks back me and my friend was ordering Chinese food. And he was like, meh Chinese food has too much sodium let's order something else. Turns out sodium is bad because it accumulates water in your body? After that I started being super particular about my sodium intake.
This[1] rather lengthy article suggests that the issue there isn't the salt, but rather the interaction between the salt and the raw fish which causes carcinogenic compounds to form.
Maybe your friend was referencing MSG? Makes me extremely thirsty hours later, and then I HAVE to "accumulate water in my body", on purpose, to satiate the unquenchable thirst caused by MSG
I don't want to kick the hornet's nest, but isn't MSG avoidance just an example of nocebo? It's just a salt right and its connection to headaches has never actually been established, it's jut something people say.
MSG is often used as a food additive in combination with heroic amounts of fat and sugar which would otherwise be unpalatable without it - particularly in a Chinese restaurant setting which is what people associate with MSG...
You're probably experiencing a sugar crash.
I suspect you don't experience the same after eating a bag of Doritos but they're absolutely loaded with MSG.. plus in all likelihood also sodium inosinate, sodium guanylate and who knows what else.
Chinese restaurants in the US are notorious for using excess salt and sweeteners.
Though to be fair it's a form of arms race, most US restaurants overdo it if the regional palette has become desensitized. It's not strictly a Chinese restaurant issue.
But many Chinese dishes on the menus are defined by their sweet and salty axis, and being in this environment they're pushed to the extreme.
I don't think sodium accumulates in the body - Na+ and Cl- are both ions which are relevant to a wide variety of cellular processes, and as far as I know your body has a lot of tools for maintaining the balance of electrolytes in the body.
As far as I understand, the health risk associated with excess sodium intake is high blood pressure, i.e. more stress on your cardiovascular system.
Kidneys too, last time I looked. Apparently it's kind of a feedback loop where salt makes them work poorly which leads to high pressure which leads to damage and repeat. Some details here:
As I understand it's related in that salt dissolves in water easily and somehow causes your body to retain water. This in turn increases the water in your blood (plasma I guess), thus the pressure increases. A 'water pill' (hydrochlorothiazide) is often prescribed along with blood pressure reducing medicine to make you urinate and remove water from your system. While my salt intake is normal, it wasn't until I was prescribed a water pill in conjunction with my blood pressure pill that I was able to see better results and also able to take less of the blood pressure med.
I mean that is just basic chemistry. Basically your body wants to have a certain concentration of ions in your bodily fluid, so if you put more sodium in, your body needs to hold on to more water to dilute it until you're able to pee it out
Sodium levels are so vitally important to our health that we we have a couple (more or less) of specialized organs for keeping it at the right balance, called 'kidneys'. Oh, OK, they also balance magnesium and potassium and maybe some other iums, but the little glomerules function by pumping sodium ions around to adjust concentrations of solute on either side of a semi-permeable membrane. Or something.
Don't worry about sodium unless you've been diagnosed with a metabolic problem.
Don't agree with that. For example here it shows that sodium might increase your chances to survive heart desease: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/good-heart-keep-holding-...
Kidneys require sodium to function properly.
Adrenals via aldosterone impact sodium. And when you're stressed, your adrenals might be in a bad shape.
I think sodium is a big deal. And some people hit with that especially hard.
I think GP meant don't worry about an excess of sodium.
I do feel kind of bloaty when I eat wretched excesses of sodium all at once, usually ramen, but it passes.
Generally eat a high salt diet, add other minerals (mostly potassium) to drinking water, and take magnesium glycinate before bed. Minerals are easy to eliminate and if I'm not getting enough there's no alternative.
I have pre-hypertension which is a BP between 120/80 and 140/90 and the quickest 'fix' is to follow a lower sodium diet. I think it's pretty common for people around 'parent' age to have this, especially if they eat the SAD, so it'll be something you hear as a kid. I know I did!
People used to die when they were 35 because they were getting stomach cancer from a lifetime of eating salted meat. The invention of refrigeration was one of the most important public health accomplishments of the last 150 years.
No, salted meat wouldn't make a list of the top ten causes of mortality back then. I doubt even the top 100, but I can't say for certain without doing more work than a comment is worth.
Apparently lots of people disagree with something that seems obvious? Source?
> Do you honestly think that "salted meat" would be listed on a death certificate?
Strawman argument.
So stomach cancer is currently 10% of cancer deaths, and cancer is currently the second leading cause of death at all ages. One can't extrapolate that back historically safely because cancer primarily affects the old and people didn't live long enough back then. But even if we just single out stomach cancer and assume incorrectly that 100% is attributed to salt, when frankly that would be a minority of stomach cancers, then it still wouldn't even make the top ten causes of mortality today. Never mind historically when people commonly died from lots of things we no longer worry about, like simple bacterial infections, childbirth, or poor dental hygiene.
The OPs argument is ridiculous and I'm surprised how many people can't see that.
Life expectancy at birth is a worthless statistic to compare to when looking at modern humans. Infant mortality was so high that it distorts the numbers. A more useful statistic is the modal age of adult death, which peaks between 65 and 75 across most estimates, regardless of era:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1728-4457....
I have a lot of older tennis friends and they suffer through cramps all the time. I ask if they’re getting enough sodium after sweating for hours and they say they’re on low sodium diets for blood pressure.
Folks you need to replace your sodium when you sweat!
People sweat regularly without any noticeable moisture droplets etc. As long as evaporation >= perspiration rate nothing builds up. It’s why a tight watch will often have moisture behind it even though you don’t seem to be sweating.
Doing strength exercises for many years now, increased sodium reduced muscle cramps and lowered recovery times. If you experience nightly cramps, increase the regular sodium and magnesium citrate intake and reduce when symptom free. Unrelated, doing breathing exercises just before going Max helps to execute in near tranquility.
There's a strong genetic factor in the link between sodium intake and blood pressure. Some people are very sensitive to it, others can consume larger amounts without causing hypertension.
There are also sex differences in sodium handling ability.
Older women who have taken blood pressure medication for many years, e.g. 10 to 20 years, have risks of losing the ability to control well the concentrations of sodium and potassium in the blood.
If they follow a low-sodium diet, they have a high risk of hyponatremia (too little sodium in the body). Depending on the diet, hypokalemia (too little potassium in the body) is also possible.
If these conditions are not diagnosed promptly, severe illness or even death are the consequence.
Unfortunately, I was not aware of these risks. My mother belonged to this risk group, but nobody knew this and her periodic blood tests were perfect, because they included many other tests, except the sodium and potassium concentrations in blood, which are mandatory to detect this problem.
My mother had very serious problems because hyponatremia was detected too late, so I believe that more people should become aware of this risk.
There are a lot of old women taking medication for high blood pressure, so all should know that a periodic cheap test for sodium in blood can easily prevent reaching a stage when complete recovery becomes difficult or impossible.
Also, any low-sodium diet should actually measure or compute how much salt you eat, because too low sodium is even more dangerous than too high sodium.
Great news for aging rodents all around the world! Too bad most experiments that work on mice have no or negative effects on humans, so we probably won't be able to benefit from this.
As other HN commenters point out, most research in this area doesn't translate to humans[0]. It might be nice if we suddenly found a miracle chemical that can add ten years to our lifespan (though we'd all be working ten years longer, not living it up in retirement), but like with every article around this subject, we'll just have to wait the coming five to six years to see if we can benefit from this ourselves.
Might be a good addition to food for pet mice though, so at least there's that.
Geroprotectors often transpose well into other species. E.g mexidol has a partially related mechanism of action and show health benefits in humans.
The idea that geroprotectors in mice do not transpose in human needs to be substantiated with rationale/evidence and scoped to specific classes of geroprotectors.
Would also like some source/info on this, seems suspicious, like something that anti-cruelty organizations came up with and people are mindlessly believing and repeating...
This says one of the highest natural sources is from olives. Association with Mediterranean diet maybe? Anyway this is linked to quercetin and other citrus bioflavonoids supplements. Pretty sure selegiline still knocks this out of the park though.
Interesting result but needs confirmation in other studies, particularly as the rutin formulation seems to be homegrown by the research team.
Incidentally, I recently learned about the Interventions Testing Program [1,2]. This is an ongoing very well conducted study investigating different drugs and supplements for longevity extension in mice. Aside from being highly rigorous, reproducible and free of conflicts, the results of this are fascinating. Particularly striking is the benefit of drugs which reduce peak glycemia after meals (acarbose and canagliflozin) in male mice.
Diet/longevity studies in mice aren't good sources of information for the general population. They are (at best) pilots/guides for further (more expensive) human testing.
Unless it's a treatment for an acute condition that you suffer from, and there's some logical basis for trusting the effect will equally apply to humans, there's no point in basing personal dietary behavior in any way off of such studies. And a lesser point is that there is likely enough agreed upon research in this area that you are not adhering to already! (Myself included, though I do try)
Of course, the people who might work on such trials might frequent HN, and research is just intrinsically interesting, so I'm not saying "this is a bad post".
Mice, by virtue of being vertebrates, and more specifically mammals, share much biology with us - from biochemistry, to cellular functions, to macro structures. There's a reasonable chance things that affect their bodies will affect ours as well.
That is a justification for doing such studies, but it says nothing about whether they provide good enough evidence for dietary/behavioral changes in the general population. Why base our daily behavior on such thin evidence? Human trials should be the minimum requirement in the vast majority of cases.
Sure because the FDA doesn't recognize aging as a specific medical condition. It's too vague of a term. However it's somewhat possible that the FDA will approve sodium rutin as a treatment for some condition that tends to become more common with age.
"Somewhat possible", in the sense of "extremely unlikely" is correct. This is a pretty small effect size in mice. If it's even real in mice, it's very likely due to specific factors related to mice that live in a small box all their lives and eat the exact same cheap dry food every day.
121 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadEDIT: this is an "early view" of the paper, before it gets published. No idea about the implications of that.
Edit: the status is listed as "Online ahead of print", so perhaps the error will get corrected prior to publication.
The Affiliations where:
Should we take this with a grain of sodium chloride instead?Only Nature, Science, Cell and a few high-end sister journals really put an effort proofreading, editing and adapting figures to the general look and feel of the journal.
It seems we always hit a limit to lifespan studies. Unless we are able to modify the organs themselves, including the insulin response and mTOR, no single substance will ever prolong lifespan in a significant way.
The other contender is Fullerene C60 which is bioavailable when diluted in oil (e.g olive oil) however it doesn't cross the blood brain barrier and hence won't stop your current neurodegeneration.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31139092/
The difficult part is the neurons, you need to change them one by one, and restore all their connections, and internal parameters.
This is my theory on how you can “refresh” yourself while keeping you you.
> It has been widely found that the volume of the brain and/or its weight declines with age at a rate of around 5% per decade after age 401 with the actual rate of decline possibly increasing with age particularly over age 70.
I feel like that's probably a big one without getting into the functional changes.
And just adding a bunch of neurons would probably be like giving your computer a new HDD. I think that the argument is about how it's important to preserve the information contained within the old neurons somehow.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf5014633
There's no single mention of diet in the abstracts and non-paywalled versions. Care to share a link or screenshot to support your claim?
If I am reading it correctly...
They didn't extend lifespan compared to baseline, but they restored baseline lifespan to sleep deprived subjects by feeding them various substances.
They tried a bunch of antioxidants, the most readily available one was melatonin, I think, but it's not clear to me what it all means.
If mice and fruit flies can live without sleep, would it work for humans? Do antioxidants help humans with sleep disorders?
All I know is that over the counter melatonin does not seem to work any miracles for me. I have no idea if it would make me capable of staying awake 24/7 if forced.
Lifespan is a separate issue, but you could look at eliminating sleep, if possible, as living 1/3 (or more) longer.
To make you fall asleep?
Do not take more than 450micro grams, over the counter contains waaay to much melatonin.
Melatonin is an antioxidant, but it is not a miracle hormone.
It just signals the absence of light. Owls and other nocturnal animals get wide awake in the presence of melatonin, humans and diurnal animals get sleepy.
Over the counter supplements usually seem to have way too large a dose, and I've read they can be very inconsistent too.
The point is, I read this amazing study, and it may be somehow incorrect or even fraudulent, but it is what it is. Sleep deprivation kills. The claim is that via, not one, but any of several substances, that can be reversed, at least in lab insects/animals.
I definitely am not advising anyone take any supplements. I want to clearly state that I don't experience any particular beneficial effects from anything I've tried.
I just am saying that uncovering the reason why sleep is needed has to have world changing applications, or end up as a spectacular debunking, it seems to me.
I would steer away from melatonin as a supplement for anything other than sleep, because it is a powerful hormone and while the science is lacking, it's better not to mess with such a powerful and important hormone.
What happens if I take more?
More might produce excessive grogginess after you wake up, and in my experience it leads to fast tolerance -- so it doesn't work; 300-450mcg works in perpetuity for me.
Sorry not sure where it is located, but you could Google it.
You have locations like this: https://theconversation.com/of-mice-and-men-why-animal-trial...
It showed that of the most-cited animal studies in prestigious scientific journals, such as Nature and Cell, only 37% were replicated in subsequent human randomised trials and 18% were contradicted in human trials. It is safe to assume that less-cited animal studies in lesser journals would have an even lower strike rate.
Not sure why that is higher, but it is phrased weird.
8% seems good to me, as that is the point of testing... but the point of the article was to avoid the hype of these early tests.
For less investigated diseases such as ALS or Parkinson it's about 700 trials without any success.
An excellent article discussing why mice studies are not applicable to humans, at least for ALS, is this one: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrneurol.2015.65
[0] http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/203577
In addition to it, mexidol can be a nice augmentation. Of course it's only a part of the complete anti ageing solution, see also:
https://www.lifespan.io/road-maps/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/ http://geroprotectors.org
Historically people consumed much more salt, and don't give me the "people used to die when they were 35" nonsense. There is a big difference between being kicked by a horse vs dying of a stroke.
Nowadays I believe it's simply lightly coated in salt to only maximize flavor since we have fridges.
Bacteria landing on salt will quickly find all of their water exiting their insides towards the salt. Life ceases to function sans water.
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK304384/
In fact, the fears around MSG seem to have some overlap with negative racial stereotypes:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51139005
You're probably experiencing a sugar crash.
I suspect you don't experience the same after eating a bag of Doritos but they're absolutely loaded with MSG.. plus in all likelihood also sodium inosinate, sodium guanylate and who knows what else.
Though to be fair it's a form of arms race, most US restaurants overdo it if the regional palette has become desensitized. It's not strictly a Chinese restaurant issue.
But many Chinese dishes on the menus are defined by their sweet and salty axis, and being in this environment they're pushed to the extreme.
As far as I understand, the health risk associated with excess sodium intake is high blood pressure, i.e. more stress on your cardiovascular system.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/kidneys-salt-and-blood-pr...
Don't worry about sodium unless you've been diagnosed with a metabolic problem.
I do feel kind of bloaty when I eat wretched excesses of sodium all at once, usually ramen, but it passes.
Generally eat a high salt diet, add other minerals (mostly potassium) to drinking water, and take magnesium glycinate before bed. Minerals are easy to eliminate and if I'm not getting enough there's no alternative.
Apparently lots of people disagree with something that seems obvious? Source?
Here's a source for you: https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2008144
Strawman argument.
So stomach cancer is currently 10% of cancer deaths, and cancer is currently the second leading cause of death at all ages. One can't extrapolate that back historically safely because cancer primarily affects the old and people didn't live long enough back then. But even if we just single out stomach cancer and assume incorrectly that 100% is attributed to salt, when frankly that would be a minority of stomach cancers, then it still wouldn't even make the top ten causes of mortality today. Never mind historically when people commonly died from lots of things we no longer worry about, like simple bacterial infections, childbirth, or poor dental hygiene.
The OPs argument is ridiculous and I'm surprised how many people can't see that.
People also had harsher lives and were exposed to a wide variety of stressors, diseases, malnutrition, etc.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/when-did-humans-star...
Everything old is new again.
Folks you need to replace your sodium when you sweat!
/soapbox
Older women who have taken blood pressure medication for many years, e.g. 10 to 20 years, have risks of losing the ability to control well the concentrations of sodium and potassium in the blood.
If they follow a low-sodium diet, they have a high risk of hyponatremia (too little sodium in the body). Depending on the diet, hypokalemia (too little potassium in the body) is also possible.
If these conditions are not diagnosed promptly, severe illness or even death are the consequence.
Unfortunately, I was not aware of these risks. My mother belonged to this risk group, but nobody knew this and her periodic blood tests were perfect, because they included many other tests, except the sodium and potassium concentrations in blood, which are mandatory to detect this problem.
My mother had very serious problems because hyponatremia was detected too late, so I believe that more people should become aware of this risk.
There are a lot of old women taking medication for high blood pressure, so all should know that a periodic cheap test for sodium in blood can easily prevent reaching a stage when complete recovery becomes difficult or impossible.
Also, any low-sodium diet should actually measure or compute how much salt you eat, because too low sodium is even more dangerous than too high sodium.
Really? I'm curious where you heard that. (purely curious, not saying you're wrong)
Might be a good addition to food for pet mice though, so at least there's that.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27351316
Incidentally, I recently learned about the Interventions Testing Program [1,2]. This is an ongoing very well conducted study investigating different drugs and supplements for longevity extension in mice. Aside from being highly rigorous, reproducible and free of conflicts, the results of this are fascinating. Particularly striking is the benefit of drugs which reduce peak glycemia after meals (acarbose and canagliflozin) in male mice.
[1] https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/dab/interventions-testing-p...
[2] https://peterattiamd.com/richardmiller/
Doesn't make people eat that diet...
2. This is a study from China, including "School of Traditional Chinese Medicine"
Unless it's a treatment for an acute condition that you suffer from, and there's some logical basis for trusting the effect will equally apply to humans, there's no point in basing personal dietary behavior in any way off of such studies. And a lesser point is that there is likely enough agreed upon research in this area that you are not adhering to already! (Myself included, though I do try)
Of course, the people who might work on such trials might frequent HN, and research is just intrinsically interesting, so I'm not saying "this is a bad post".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594046/
More than 95% of successful animal studies fail to progress further from human trials.
There's obviously a great need for doing these tests in a different fashion.