#471: Salt & Bone Health – Is There Cause For Concern?
Sigma Nutrition Radio
Danny Lennon
4.8 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2023
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Links:
About This Episode:
Does sodium lead to calcium losses? Do high-salt diets harm bone health? At what thresholds could there be an impact? Does any of this change our recommendations around salt/sodium intake?
Thanks to Sigma Nutrition Premium subscriber Kate Wall for submitting a question in the member's area that inspired this episode.
Kate asks: "Salt can impact calcium excretion in the urine and it is said that a high salt diet can increase risk of osteoporosis as it draws calcium from the bone and excretes it. How much of an impact does dietary salt intake actually have on bone health and how high would salt intake have to be for this to be a concern? Obviously high salt intakes are not something to aim for in general, but just wondered if this was a mechanism that could remove meaningful amounts of calcium in a way that I should be advising around this in those that we work with as nutritional professionals. Thanks!"
So in this episode, Danny and Alan look at some of the evidence in this area to see if there are impacts that have pragmatic implications for nutrition and medical professionals, as well as health-concious people.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | And welcome to another episode of Sigma Nutrition Radio. |
| 0:17.6 | This is episode 471 of the podcast. You are very welcome. My name is Danny Lennon, |
| 0:24.8 | and beside me is Dr. Alan Flanagan. We obviously have a number of episodes previously that people |
| 0:30.8 | may have heard about sodium intakes, most of that relating to cardiovascular disease outcomes. |
| 0:36.6 | And we also have an episode specifically on bone health, |
| 0:39.6 | where we talked about the impact of a number of nutrients in particular, |
| 0:45.0 | but not sodium specifically. |
| 0:48.3 | And so today we are going to look at the impact of sodium on bone health. |
| 0:52.5 | And this actually comes off the back of a question |
| 0:56.0 | that we were sent from one of our premium subscribers, Kate Walth. So thank you, Kate for the question. |
| 1:02.0 | And in short, to kind of paraphrase, Kate essentially asked, |
| 1:06.0 | how much of an impact does dietary salt intake have on bone health? |
| 1:11.1 | And how high would salt intake have to be for this to be a concern? |
| 1:15.7 | Close quote. |
| 1:16.4 | So this kind of leaves us with a number of questions that hopefully we can walk through today. |
| 1:21.1 | First we can ask, well, what are the mechanisms by which there could be potential harm? |
| 1:26.7 | Is there actual evidence that high sodium intakes could harm bone health? |
| 1:30.5 | If so, what do we see in terms of dose response or thresholds? |
| 1:34.5 | What factors might impact someone's risk? |
| 1:36.7 | And then hopefully we'll end up with practically what this means on a couple of different |
| 1:41.3 | levels. |
| 1:42.3 | One for our usual population guideline intakes or limits on sodium, and then also |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Danny Lennon, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Danny Lennon and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.