A new study from McGill University has found that eating too much salt may do more than just affect your heart and kidneys—it can also cause inflammation in the brain, which raises blood pressure.
This discovery opens up a new way of thinking about high blood pressure and may lead to new treatments that target the brain instead of just the kidneys and blood vessels.
High blood pressure, or hypertension, is a common condition that affects nearly two out of every three people over the age of 60. It often has no symptoms, but it raises the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and other serious health problems.
While most treatments for high blood pressure focus on the kidneys or blood vessels, about one-third of people with the condition don’t respond well to these medications. That’s why this new research is so important—it suggests that the brain might also be playing a major role.
The study was led by Professor Masha Prager-Khoutorsky and a team of scientists from McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. They published their findings in the journal Neuron.
To find out how salt affects the brain, the researchers gave rats water with two percent salt—similar to a diet filled with salty fast food like bacon, processed cheese, and instant noodles.
This high-salt diet caused certain immune cells in the rats’ brains to become active. These cells triggered inflammation in a specific brain region and led to a spike in a hormone called vasopressin, which is known to raise blood pressure.
Using new brain imaging tools and lab techniques, the researchers were able to watch these changes happening in real time. This is one of the first studies to clearly show that a salty diet can affect the brain directly, not just the heart or kidneys.
Rats were used instead of mice because their bodies handle salt and water more like humans do. This makes the findings more likely to be relevant to people, according to Prager-Khoutorsky.
She explained that scientists haven’t focused much on how the brain might be involved in high blood pressure, mainly because it’s harder to study. But thanks to newer research methods, scientists can now explore the brain’s role more closely.
The researchers plan to keep studying whether other types of high blood pressure might also be linked to changes in the brain.
This study could be a game-changer for how we treat high blood pressure, especially for people who don’t respond to current medications. It also gives us another reason to watch our salt intake—not just for our hearts, but for our brains too.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies that widely used blood pressure drug may increase eye disease risk and common blood pressure drugs linked to cognitive decline.
For more about blood pressure, please read studies about why checking blood pressure while lying down is very important and lowering top blood pressure number to less than 120 mm Hg effectively prevents heart disease.
The study is published in Neuron.
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