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Life expectancy has been declining in North America over the past 4 years in a row, largely due to non-communicable diseases such as high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. The impact of COVID-19 is not yet included in these statistics. This is despite of all of the improvements in medicine. If I had a magic wand and could change one thing that would reverse this trend, it would be a 40% reduction of the salt intake in the population. This book is about the dangers of a high salt intake and the benefit of reducing sodium intake below 2000 mg per day. Benefits include a 50% reduction of osteoporosis-induced hip fractures, a 75% reduction in heart attacks and an 80% reduction in strokes. There will be many other beneficial effects such as a reduction of kidney stones. Moreover, billions of health care dollars could be saved if we adopted the salt laws of Finland, which has been implementing the world's strictest laws for more than 3 decades. This book is about one policy change that will result in a substantial improvement in the health of our population.
About the author
Guido Filler is professor of paediatrics at Western University in London, Ontario, with cross-appointments to medicine and pathology and laboratory medicine. His area of expertise is nephrology. He is also a clinical pharmacologist. He served as chair/chief of the department of paediatrics from 2006-2016. Dr. Filler is a prolific author with over 300 publications in PubMed as well as one book entitled "Becoming a successful scholar" and multiple book chapters. He is a world expert for the measurement of renal function. He has also extensively studied drug disposition in children and youth. Driven by the surge of paediatric patients with kidney stones, he recently expanded his research to this area. The current book originated from that research, which demonstrated the profound impact of our high salt diet on kidney stones. As a system thinker, he provides a solution to the growing incidence of non-communicable diseases.
