Salt is not all bad, but too much of it can have a serious impact on your cardiovascular health. Reducing our salt intake can seem challenging, however, and new research maps the neurons that make passing up salt so difficult.

Share on Pinterest Craving that extra pinch of salt is a process “tighly regulated by the brain,” researchers say.

A moderate amount of salt is crucial to our health. The sodium found in salt helps the body to contract and relax its muscles, send electric impulses between nerves, and keep fluids at a balanced level.

Additionally, through a delicate interplay between the kidneys, our water levels, and cellular function, sodium helps to regulate blood pressure.

But too much salt can have adverse effects on our health. When there is too much sodium in the blood, and the kidneys cannot cope, the water is sucked out from the cells and moved into the bloodstream.

This increases the volume of blood, making the heart and blood vessels have to work harder in order to keep a healthy blood pressure. Over time, this may stiffen the arteries and increase the likelihood of having a heart attack or stroke.

For these reasons, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that middle-aged adults and seniors do not exceed 2,500 milligrams of salt every day. This is roughly the equivalent of two thirds of a teaspoon. However, cutting down on salt can be difficult. A new study helps us to understand why that is.

A team of researchers from the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA, set out to map the brain circuit that underpins our craving for salt.

The scientists were led by Dr. Bradford Lowell, and Jon M. Resch – a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Lowell’s laboratory – is one of the study’s first authors. Their findings were published in the journal Neuron.