This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

It's both painful and insulting to rub salt in a wound. But a new study shows that salty skin can actually

ward off infections, at least in mice fed a high sodium diet. That's according to a

study in the journal Cell metabolism. We tend to think of dietary salt as a health threat, and it is. Too much sodium

has been linked to high blood pressure and an increased risk for heart attack and stroke.

But we also crave salty snacks and store the accumulated sodium in our bodies, particularly in the skin.

A clue to explaining this paradox came when researchers noticed that mice that were attacked by a cage mate wound up with an unusually large amount of

sodium at the site of the bite. They then found high sodium levels in people at

the locations of bacterial skin infections. So the researchers fed mice a high sodium diet and found that the dietary

salt boosted the activity of immune cells in the animal's skin which gave them a

leg up when it came to healing their wounds. The findings could lead to treatments that would help us

assault infections without having to resort to pretzels, potato chips, or pickles.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkins.