London - Eating too much salt may be bad for your heart – but it can protect against skin infections, research has found.
A high salt diet causes sodium levels to build up in the skin, boosting the immune system to fight off the germs that cause bacterial skin infections, say scientists.
In an experiment, German researchers discovered that mice which were fed a high salt diet healed infections in their feet more quickly. This is because the salt had raised the activity of immune cells called macrophages, making their immune systems more responsive.
The findings, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, may also highlight how salt was once effectively used to ward off infections before antibiotics were invented.
Professor Jonathan Jantsch, of the University of Regensburg, now hopes that their research could help develop techniques to promote faster healing in humans, saying: ‘Local application of high-salt-containing wound dressings and the development of other salt-boosting antimicrobial therapies might bear therapeutic potential.’
However, he warned against anyone starting a high-salt diet as a result of the study, adding: ‘Due to the overwhelming clinical studies demonstrating that high dietary salt is detrimental to hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, we feel that at present our data does not justify recommendations on high dietary salt in the general population.’
Daily Mail