How What You Eat Affects Your Health
As an aging resident of Santa Clarita, you likely know the potential health risks you face and how they can become more prevalent as you age. However, has your in home care provider, or your research, told you the foods you eat can impact your health? Or how putting down your salt shaker and eating more fruits and vegetables can actually increase your health? If not, it is definitely time for you to find out!
Sodium, which is a key ingredient in table salt, can cause an increase in your blood pressure, which can be increasingly dangerous if you do not take action to get plenty of potassium to counteract the effect. If you eat a large amount of sodium and fail to eat the proper amount of potassium, which is found in foods such as spinach and bananas, you will have an increased risk of experiencing a serious heart attack. According to experts, anyone over the age of 51 should not have more than 1,500 milligrams of salt each day. To put this into perspective, one teaspoon of salt has 2,300 milligrams.
The bad news is that for people that have eaten salt their entire lives, it will likely take much more than a little willpower to completely give up salt. A recent study has shown that there is a similar biological process in the development of an addiction to salt as what is developed for a drug addiction. The study was completed on mice and when they were deprived of the sodium, the mice begin to behave like a human who was addicted to cocaine or heroin would if they were denied a fix. A number of researchers have make the assumption that understanding this addiction to salt may help to reduce obesity, since there are a number of processed foods that are full of sodium.
Since a seniors potential for heart disease is already at an elevated point, reducing salt should be included in a plan for reducing risk. If you enlist the services of an in home care provider in Santa Clarita for your senior loved one, you should ensure they help to prevent too much sodium intake; or work diligently to help the senior counteract the effects by giving them potassium rich foods.
Comfort Keepers in Santa Clarita offer trained staff that understand the risks that seniors face. As a result, they will provide the best possible care for these individuals while working to reduce their risk or serious health problems, such as heart disease.
Comfort Keepers
23900 Lyons Avenue
Santa Clarita, CA 91321
661-287-4200
