Teens who eat less salt lower their long-term risk for high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke, new research indicates.

The finding stems from a computerized projection of what would happen if adolescent boys and girls were to shave off 3 grams of salt from their daily consumption of common processed foods.

“Reducing the amount of salt that is already added to the food that we eat could mean that teenagers live many more years free of hypertension,” study lead author Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco, said in an American Heart Association news release. The findings were to be presented Sunday at the heart association’s annual meeting, in Chicago.

“The additional benefit of lowering salt consumption early is that we can hopefully change the expectations of how food should taste, ideally to something slightly less salty,” Bibbins-Domingo said.

The study authors noted that in the United States, teens are the main consumers of salt. Their daily ingestion of 9 grams of salt per day is higher than any other age group. At 3,800 milligrams of sodium, that amount is more than double the AHA recommendations for daily consumption (1,500 milligrams).

Approximately 80 percent of salt intake comes from processed and/or prepared foods. More than one-third of that salt is specifically found in cereals, breads, and pastries, while pizza (according to the National Center for Health Statistics) ranks as the nation’s king of salt, the study authors said.

A daily 3-gram drop in consumption of the salt typically found in such foods would reduce the incidence of high blood pressure among teens by between 44 percent and 63 percent. And as these teens age, the high blood pressure incidence reductions would persist, dropping between 30 percent to 43 percent among 35- to 50-year olds, according to the study authors’ computer modeling.

The analysis also revealed that by the time teens reached the age of 50, such salt reduction would result in a 7 percent to 12 percent drop in heart disease; an 8 percent to 14 percent drop in heart attacks; a 5 percent to 8 percent drop in stroke rates; and a 5 to 9 percent drop in deaths due to all causes.

More information

Visit the American Heart Association for more on the group’s salt guidelines.

This article originally appeared in Business Week.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows diabetes could affect as many as one in three Americans by the year 2050 if the obesity rate, among other things, continues to rise.

Americans in general are not known for having a healthy diet. This is usually attributed to fast food. But there is another often hidden factor that many Americans never think about.

“The vast majority of Americans eat way too much sugar,” said Dr. Tim Reynolds, author of The Green Beret Doctor’s Health Plan for Life, and managing partner of HealthCARE Express in Texarkana.

“We are a country comprised of grain eaters and lovers of high fructose corn syrup,” Reynolds explained. “The next time you go out to eat, look at the menu and count how many dishes feature pasta or rice. On your next trip to the grocery store, try and buy foods without high fructose corn syrup. You will probably find it is almost impossible because grains and high fructose corn syrup are everywhere. And both turn into sugars.”

Reynolds has a simplified explanation for why sugar increases obesity.

“The body has developed a mechanism over centuries to store energy for times of famine. When you eat a diet high in sugar, your body has to over-produce insulin to process the sugar. The extra insulin causes your body to store the sugar as fat. When you eat too much sugar for too long, your cells can become resistant to insulin. This causes your body to store even more extra sugar as fat,” he explained.

This is why it is important to be aware of what is actually in your food. You may not have taken the time to wonder why sugar is in so many things. It actually dates back to the 1980s when nutritionists started teaching people that the reason they were gaining weight was because they were consuming high fat foods. Jumping on the bandwagon, food companies across the nation rushed to create foods that were “low fat”. The shelves of our supermarkets became inundated with these low fat foods.

What people did not realize at the time was that in order to maintain good tasting foods, companies were just replacing “fat” with sugar. It took many years for people to wake up and realize sugar is far worse for your health than fat. The low fat craze that replaced fat with sugar actually made us fatter and sicker as a nation.

By simply paying attention to your sugar intake, you can dramatically affect your total calories and the quality of those calories for the better. Read food labels carefully, checking for sugar content listed under carbohydrates. A good rule of thumb is if a food or drink has over eight grams of sugar per serving, don’t eat it.

An even healthier alternative is to put the processed food down and pick up natural whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Every day you are bombarded with advertisements designed to convince you to purchase foods that are not necessarily good for you. It is your responsibility to see past what the advertisers want you to see and actually read the nutritional labels. Many of the products being promoted as healthy are full of sugar. If there are more than eight grams of sugar per serving, make a healthier choice.

To learn more about the sugar crisis in America, visit Dr. Reynolds’ website at www.LivingEveryMinute.com.

You may be startled to notice that flu shots are now available at HealthCARE Express. Already? It’s only September.

“We have already started to see flu cases this year,” said Dr. Tim Reynolds. “This year all of our clinics are starting to offer flu shots in September rather than late October or November. Flu shots only have effective rates of about three months, so we are encouraging patients to consider getting a flu shot now and then again in November to cover them throughout flu season.”

HealthCARE Express offers the flu vaccine during normal business hours and on Saturdays. In Texarkana those hours are weekdays 8 a.m. to midnight and Saturdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. I nLongview those hours are weekdays 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Throughout the entire flu season, the vaccines will be more plentiful this year than last, government officials say, and the federal government is advising local residents to take advantage of that fact. Last month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control announced a revision to its recommendations for the annual vaccination. The recommendation was changed to include everyone more than six months of age. The old recommendation was for individuals ages 18 to 49.

The flu, or influenza virus, is an infectious virus that is transmitted through the air by coughing and sneezing or by making contact with other contaminated objects. According to estimates released by the CDC on Thursday, the virus is believed to have caused 23,000 deaths a year from 1976-2007. The H1N1 flu pandemic is believed to have been linked to 8,870 – 18,883 deaths last year.

The new flu vaccines will include the A and B strains of seasonal flu along with H1N1 virus.

For more information on the flu vaccine, call 903-791-WELL (Texarkana) or 903-759-WELL (Longview).