Reducing sodium lowers blood pressure, but most dietary sodium comes from pickles, papad, packaged snacks and restaurant food rather than from added salt. Raising potassium is the other half: potassium helps the kidney excrete sodium, and Indian intakes are typically well below requirement.
Where the sodium actually is
Removing the salt shaker from the table addresses a modest fraction of intake. The larger contributors are preserved and prepared foods, and they are easy to overlook because they do not taste proportionately salty.
- Pickles, papad and chutneys eaten daily
- Packaged namkeen, biscuits and bread — including savoury items that taste sweet
- Restaurant and delivery food, which is consistently high
- Instant noodles, soups and seasoning cubes
- Processed cheese, sauces and ready masalas
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Take the 2-minute checkThe potassium half
Sodium and potassium work against each other in the kidney. Potassium promotes sodium excretion, which is why raising it lowers blood pressure through a different route from cutting salt.
Most dietary guidance in India emphasises the first and is silent on the second, although the typical intake gap is larger on the potassium side.
- Banana, papaya, orange and pomegranate
- Potato and sweet potato, particularly with the skin
- Rajma, chana and other pulses
- Palak, methi and other greens
- Coconut water and curd
2-minute check
What is causing your weight gain?
Four questions. Your result appears immediately — we do not ask for an email.
What happens when you diet?
How is your energy and temperature?
Do you get strong cravings or afternoon crashes?
How do you sleep?
No strong metabolic driver shows up
That usually means the plan is the issue rather than your physiology — a much easier problem.
A driver may be involved
Thyroid and insulin are the two worth testing first. Both are common and both are treatable.
Your answers strongly suggest a metabolic driver
This is the pattern where dieting alone tends to fail. Testing thyroid, insulin and vitamin D is the sensible next step.
This check is an indication, not a diagnosis. It does not replace medical advice.
What else moves blood pressure
Diet is one of several levers and not always the largest one for a given person.
Weight, and particularly waist circumference, matters considerably. Sleep matters, and untreated sleep apnoea is a common and much-missed cause of resistant hypertension. Alcohol raises blood pressure in a dose-related way. Regular aerobic activity lowers it. Chronic stress contributes through a real physiological route, not only a behavioural one.
The line we will not cross
Nothing here is a reason to alter blood pressure medication. Blood pressure is treated to prevent stroke and heart disease, and the consequences of stopping treatment are not gradual.
If your readings improve, that is a conversation to have with the doctor who prescribed the medicine, and it is their decision to make. We will support the dietary side of the work and we will not comment on the prescription.
In short
Questions we are asked
Is rock salt or sendha namak better than table salt?
Not meaningfully for blood pressure. The sodium content is broadly similar. Iodised salt, however, matters for thyroid function, and switching away from it entirely is not a good trade.
How much salt is reasonable?
The World Health Organization recommends under 5 g of salt a day for adults. Typical Indian intake is considerably above that, largely from the sources listed here.
Reading about it is the easy part.The assessment turns this into your own numbers — free, with a free first consultation, and no figure quoted that we cannot substantiate.
Start my free assessmentConditions this relates to
Recipes that put this into practice
Flaxseed chutney
Whole flaxseed passes through undigested. Ground into a podi, it becomes a daily habit.
See the recipe →Barley and vegetable khichdi
The same comfort food, with three times the fibre and a different afterwards.
See the recipe →Potassium-rich kachumber
Most blood pressure advice stops at salt. Potassium is the half nobody mentions.
See the recipe →Related reading
Why your waist matters more than the scale
Where fat sits matters more than how much there is — and BMI misses it entirely.
Read →LDL is not the whole picture
A lipid profile holds more information than the one number most people read.
Read →Uric acid: what raises it, and what the old advice got wrong
The forbidden-food list most people are given is decades behind the evidence.
Read →References
- World Health Organization — guideline on sodium intake for adults and children.
- Indian Council of Medical Research — dietary guidelines for Indians.
- [Further references to be completed by the medical review panel.]
This article is general health information, written by a clinical nutritionist and reviewed by a doctor. It is not a diagnosis and it does not replace advice from your own clinician. Never change prescribed medication on the basis of what you read here.