Sticking to a Low-Salt Diet

(HealthScout) - Getting young, black males to stick to a low-salt diet may require novel support strategies, new research shows.

And with hypertension striking so many middle-age blacks, researchers say those strategies can't come too soon.

The study, conducted at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, enrolled 184 adolescents -- 83 boys and 101 girls between the ages of 13 and 16. They were asked to avoid fast foods and processed meats, which are high in salt. They were also encouraged to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. They stayed on the diet for five days, kept a food diary and filled out questionnaires about what types of verbal support or negative comments they received from family and friends.

The study found girls who successfully followed the low-sodium diet reported getting more emotional support than did the boys. But strangely, boys who followed the diet said they received less family support than those who didn't stay with the diet did.

Why?

Researchers can only guess, says Dawn K. Wilson, lead author of the study, which appears in the current issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

"We do know that boys and girls are socialized differently and respond differently to stress," she says. "But this is the first study we've done with diet. It seems that girls are more likely to seek out supportive relationships of peers and family, and boys are more likely to seek out problem-solving strategies for coping with stress. Girls are socialized to emotions, but boys are socialized to be more independent. It's a little bit threatening to their egos to depend on emotional support. Boys would rather fix it and resolve it, and girls have a tendency to work through the emotional side and need moral support."

But one expert thinks the boys may have just been afraid to admit they got help.

It's not that boys require less emotional support than girls do, explains Dr. Inyanga Mack, clinical director of family medicine at Temple University. But if you ask boys about it, "they probably would answer no because emotional support sounds too wussy."

The study was conducted because health experts are concerned about the prevalence of high blood pressure among middle-age blacks. About half have it by the age of 45, says Wilson, who believes the answer lies in prevention, such as low-sodium diets. Sodium causes water retention, which can strain the cardiovascular system and jack up blood pressure.

"These low-salt diets are extremely difficult to follow, and we know much less about long-term compliance," Wilson says. "That's why we're moving in the direction of easier diets, like ones that are high in fruits and vegetables. This increases your potassium and helps you get rid of extra fluid and excrete excess sodium."

So far, few studies have focused on black teens, Wilson adds. More needs to be done because "it's a critical age -- a time when you're making decisions about who you are going to be and the habits you'll carry over into adult life. It's a critical age for intervening."

But whether boys need different kinds of intervention than girls is questionable, Mack claims.

"I'm not sure I buy the conclusion of the study -- that emotional support is beneficial to girls but not boys," says Mack. "I think the boys had support from somewhere, but maybe the way the boys responded to the question had something to do with how they interpreted the information."

Mack also tends to doubt the boys' responses because "making the changes called for in the low-sodium diet are difficult or nearly impossible without some kind of support."

For instance, the dietary changes are expensive, and teens need adult support to buy the correct food.

"Buying a bag of chips is cheaper than buying a bag of fruit," Mack says. "I'd also like to see how the researchers define emotional support and how they worded the survey, because from my experience, whenever you try to make lifestyle changes, you usually need a supportive environment in which to make food choices."

Reference Source 101

To learn more about diet and hypertension, read the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) study, a program of Harvard University. You can also check out the American Heart Association.

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".