Your questions about sodium, answered

WITHOUT sodium, you wouldn’t be able to survive. Nerves would fail to fire; muscles wouldn’t contract. But experts say most people consume far too much of it, increasing their risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.

In the United States, for instance, about 95 per cent of men and 77 per cent of women consume more than 2,300 milligrams per day, a limit US federal health officials recommend.

But in recent decades, researchers have disagreed about exactly how much sodium is too much, with some suggesting that federal guidelines are too strict. Those reports captured our attention and left many people confused, said Dr Lawrence Appel, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.