 I am Dr. Prakash Nafralis from Manipal Hospital in Malaysia. Today I thought probably I will briefly give you some inputs on the importance of salt. Salt I mean the common salt or chemically as it is known as sodium chloride. There is an interesting history added to this salt. Not that we have started noting about salt of late. It has been there for ages. If you had to really know almost as early as two million years ago when the human mankind came into existence salt was a topic which was alluded to and subsequently with a 13 year almost 1300 13,000 years ago salt again came into limelight wherein our Homo sapiens what you call as a wise man the only surviving human being consumed very less salt to the tune of almost 0.5 grams per day and then came around 8000 8000 years ago when we had these Romanians. Romanians realize the importance of salt. They used to preserve their meat in the brain and then slowly appreciated the importance of salt the taste of salt and subsequently it so became so important that the salt was traded in markets. Salt was actually used as a barter for gold. One ounce of salt was almost equal into one ounce of gold. That is how the importance of salt was introduced then and subsequently if you have to speak about what happened in India way back in 1930s or so the Britishers who were ruling us those years started that salt and taxed salt. Salt was taxed those days and then we all know that a great leader father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi went on a real march known as the Dandi march wherein he protested against the Britishers for charging or taxing salt. That's how it began and then subsequently it was a history which everybody knows. So coming to the salt the importance of salt salt has become a necessity for all of us now as a taste enhancing substance and salt to say is a combination of sodium and chloride 40% of sodium and 60% of chloride but we commonly use that term we don't really bifurcate the two but we can always say that salt is the common salt which we all take and generally the salt intake could be anywhere from 0.5 grams to 10 grams and if you have to really know what is followed worldwide in the US why I'm quoting US is that because there were studies which were done and they took into account as to how much of salt the Americans consume and it is known that probably they would take almost three to four grams of salt per day and we copied their practice and in fact our salt intake in Indians is almost equal into almost 8 to 10 grams so we generally take a lot of salt and where does the salt come from mostly it is from the processed food or canned food to the extent of almost 80% and 20% maybe we had a traditional salt into our diet having known all about how the salt is important where is it available I think we should also know why is it important for us to know about salt because it has its own effects on the body so anything excess anything in excess that is taken and I mean what I mean is the salt intake has number of effects on the body right from high blood pressure, heart attacks, heart failures, strokes, some cancers in the body especially the cancer stomach and other cancers then it is also known to have an effect on the asthma, osteoporosis and many other diseases see the some of the diseases which have been associated with high salt intake and coming to the hypertension part it is also noted that African Americans and Indians are salt sensitive that means 50 to 60% of us are salt sensitive and they tend to develop essential hypertension in addition to the other two reasons being the environmental factors and genetic factors so what happens in this essential hypertension patients is that kidney is most important vital organ which does a wonderful function of excreting the salt how much our salt do we take it will preserve what is required and the rest is excreted it is believed that the salt is not excreted to the extent which is to be excreted in these patients who have salt sensitive hypertension there are other reasons also as to why these people have salt sensitivity in the form of some of the enzymes these what we call as stress hormones there is increased secretion of stress hormones in the form of catecholamines and there is increased calcium in the blood vessels also according for this hypertension. Now coming to the renal or kidney effects what about kidney effects because of salt those people who take excess persistently persistent excess intake of salt can give rise to high blood pressure over a period of time not that they take salt today and they develop blood pressure tomorrow it is over a period of time that they can develop and that hypertension over a period of time say 15 to 20 years or more than that if they have then they tend to develop hypertension related kidney disease also in the form of chronic kidney disease or end cage in stage kidney disease some people are known to develop proteinuria some people known are also known to have increased incidence of renal stones. The hypertension part what I was trying to allude to is only the tip to iceberg and going by the research studies there are other things which have been associated with salt so we it is prudent for all of us to limit our salt intake. If I have to say in plain word about salt is that salt is almost second white poison you can say the first one all of you know is about the sugar sugar being the white poison and then this can be taken as a second white poison which has lot of deleterious effects on the body so it is prudent for all of us to restrict our salt intake how much ever is absolutely required to be palatable that much amount is what one should take and I would recommend that a salt intake of almost up to two grams per day is what one should take no salt also is not good and the other thing is people who have kidney disease had to be little wary of taking especially one other salt known as rock salt or in Kannada it is called saindra's Ravana so that they need to avoid. So ladies and gentlemen I think probably it is important for us to restrict these two white poisons to keep our ourselves healthy and fit and tidy thank you.