Data collected by the American Heart Association suggests 15 percent of all deaths from heart attacks, stroke and other cardiovascular diseases were caused by consuming excessive quantities. In addition, most of those deaths occurred in lower-income countries.
"National and global public-health measures, such as comprehensive sodium reduction programs, could potentially save millions of lives," said one of the study's leaders, Dariush Mozaffarian, an associate professor of medicine and
The American Heart Association suggests ingesting no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day.
