Contrary to long-held assumptions, high-salt diets may not increase the risk of death, say researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York City.

After analyzing dietary intake data from a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States, the researchers report they actually detected a significantly increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease associated with lower sodium diets.

Their findings are published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

After adjusting for known CVD risk factors, such as smoking, diabetes and blood pressure, the quarter of the sample who reported consuming the lowest amount of sodium were found to be 80 percent more likely to die from CVD compared with the quarter consuming the highest level of sodium.

The risk for death from any cause appeared 24 percent greater for those consuming lower amounts of salt, but this latter difference was not quite large enough to dismiss the role of chance.

+ BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

When babies are born, they react automatically to certain stimuli: Put something in their hand and they grip it. Touch a finger to their cheek and they turn to suck the finger. These are called “primitive reflexes” and generally only last a few months.

+ GET ME THAT. STAT!

A study by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health suggests cat ownership may have a protective effect against the development of asthma symptoms in young children at age 5.

Published by the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the study found that children with cats in the home were more likely to have made allergy-related antibodies. At 3 years of age, these children were more likely to have a wheeze, a respiratory symptom associated with asthma, but by age 5, they were less likely to suffer such problems.

+ NEVER SAY DIET

The world’s speed-eating record for peas is 9 1/2 one-pound bowls in 12 minutes, held by Eric Booker.

+ NUMBER CRUNCHER

A Burger King Triple Whopper with two slices of cheese contains 88 percent of the recommended total fat intake for a 2,000-calorie daily diet.

It also contains 260 milligrams of cholesterol (87 percent); 1,640 mg of sodium (68 percent); 53 grams of total carbohydrates (18 percent); 4g of dietary fiber (16 percent); 9g of sugar and 78g of protein.

+ MEDTRONICA

NHS blog doctor

nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com

A sad, cynical but sometimes funny peek at the British National Health Service, at health care elsewhere in the world and why you should seriously avoid getting sick.

+ STORIES FOR THE WAITING ROOM

The modern lobotomy was the brainchild of Antonio Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist who believed mental illness was a problem of dysfunctional neurons in the frontal lobe, which is located just behind the forehead.

Get rid of the bad brain cells, Moniz thought, and voila! No more insanity.

Moniz’s thinking was based on anecdotal research by others using monkeys. Moniz tried it on humans and with some apparent success, enough in fact that he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in medicine “for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses.”

Inspired and emboldened, a doctor named Walter Freeman began performing lobotomies in the United States in 1949, eventually traveling the country in — and we’re not making this up — his “lobotomobile.”

Like Moniz, Freeman boasted of apparent success stories, but critics noted that he wasn’t a trained surgeon and didn’t bother with sterile instruments, and that his evidence of patient improvement tended to be, well, incoherent.

Eventually, the rest of the world noticed that lobotomies didn’t make patients calmer; they made them into zombies. The practice fell into disfavor and disregard, helpfully pushed into the dustbin of medical history by novels like Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1962.

+ PHOBIA OF THE WEEK

Kakorraphiaphobia — fear of failure

+ OBSERVATION

“Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.”

— Canadian physician and medical pioneer William Osler (1849-1919)

+ last words

“Beautiful.”

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) in reply to her husband asking her how she felt.