If you have high blood pressure, the American Heart Association recommends keeping your sodium intake below 1,500 milligrams per day. That’s roughly two-thirds of a teaspoon of table salt. The general population guideline is 2,300 mg per day, but the lower 1,500 mg target is specifically aimed at people with hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and adults over 51.
Why the Limit Is Lower for Hypertension
When you eat sodium, your body holds onto extra water to keep the concentration of sodium in your blood balanced. That extra fluid increases the volume of blood moving through your arteries, which raises pressure on the vessel walls. Over time, this sustained pressure damages the lining of your arteries, stiffens large blood vessels, and forces your heart to work harder with every beat.
For someone whose blood pressure is already elevated, that additional fluid volume and arterial stress compound an existing problem. The kidneys play a central role here: they’re responsible for flushing out excess sodium, but when they can’t keep up, the sodium stays in your bloodstream and the cycle of fluid retention and rising pressure continues. Chronic high pressure also remodels the arterial walls themselves, making them thicker and less flexible, which further raises resistance to blood flow.
Not Everyone Responds to Sodium the Same Way
About 50% of people with hypertension are considered “salt sensitive,” meaning their blood pressure rises noticeably when sodium intake goes up and drops when it comes back down. Roughly 25% of people with normal blood pressure are also salt sensitive. If you’re in this group, cutting sodium will have an outsized effect on your readings.
Interestingly, about 15% of the general population has the opposite response: their blood pressure actually rises on a very low sodium diet and improves when sodium increases. This is called inverse salt sensitivity, and it’s still being studied. For most people with hypertension, though, reducing sodium intake is one of the most reliable non-drug strategies for lowering blood pressure.
How Quickly Sodium Reduction Lowers Blood Pressure
You don’t have to wait months to see results. In a well-controlled trial, people with hypertension who switched from a high sodium diet to a low sodium diet saw their systolic blood pressure (the top number) drop by about 4.5 points within the first week. By week four, that drop had nearly doubled to about 8.4 points. Diastolic pressure (the bottom number) followed a similar pattern: down 1.3 points at one week and 4.6 points at four weeks.
The important detail is that blood pressure was still declining at the four-week mark with no sign of leveling off. The full benefit of sodium reduction likely takes longer than a month to fully materialize. So if you cut back and your numbers only budge slightly in the first week or two, that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.
How the Guidelines Compare
Different organizations set slightly different numbers, but they all agree that most people eat far too much sodium. The global average intake is around 4,310 mg per day, more than double most recommendations.
- American Heart Association: less than 1,500 mg/day for all adults, with particular emphasis on people with hypertension
- World Health Organization: less than 2,000 mg/day for adults (equivalent to about 5 grams of salt, or just under a teaspoon)
- U.S. Dietary Guidelines: no more than 2,300 mg/day for the general population, dropping to 1,500 mg/day for people with hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, or those over 51
- DASH diet: the standard version targets 2,300 mg/day, but the lower-sodium version at 1,500 mg/day produces even greater blood pressure reductions
The FDA sets the Daily Value on nutrition labels at 2,300 mg. As a quick shortcut when reading labels: 5% Daily Value or less per serving is considered low sodium, and 20% or more is considered high.
Where All That Sodium Is Hiding
Most sodium in the average diet doesn’t come from the salt shaker. More than 40% comes from just ten categories of food: bread and rolls, deli and cured meats, pizza, poultry (including processed chicken products), soups, sandwiches like cheeseburgers, cheese, pasta dishes, meat-based mixed dishes like meatloaf, and salty snacks like chips and pretzels.
Bread is a good example of how sodium sneaks up on you. A single slice may only have 100 to 200 mg, but if you’re eating bread at every meal, those servings add up fast. Canned soups are another common culprit, with some brands packing over 800 mg in a single serving. When you’re aiming for 1,500 mg total for the entire day, one bowl of soup can eat up more than half your budget.
Potassium Matters Too
Sodium doesn’t act alone. The ratio of sodium to potassium in your diet appears to matter more for blood pressure than either mineral by itself. Potassium helps your kidneys flush out sodium and relaxes the walls of your blood vessels. When sodium is high and potassium is low, the combined effect on blood pressure is worse than either imbalance alone. The reverse is also true: pairing lower sodium with higher potassium amplifies the benefit.
Potassium-rich foods include bananas, potatoes, sweet potatoes, spinach, beans, yogurt, and avocados. The DASH eating plan, which emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean protein, is specifically designed around this sodium-potassium balance. In trials, the DASH diet lowered blood pressure within the first week, and combining it with the 1,500 mg sodium target produced the largest reductions.
Practical Ways to Stay Under 1,500 mg
Hitting 1,500 mg per day is genuinely difficult if you eat a typical Western diet. A single fast-food meal can easily contain 1,500 to 2,000 mg on its own. But steady, incremental changes make a real difference even if you don’t hit the target perfectly every day.
Cook more meals at home, where you control the salt. Use herbs, spices, citrus, and vinegar for flavor instead of relying on salt. Choose fresh or frozen vegetables over canned (or rinse canned vegetables before eating). When buying packaged foods, compare labels and pick the lower-sodium option. Restaurant meals are reliably high in sodium, so when eating out, ask for sauces and dressings on the side.
Your taste buds adjust. After two to three weeks of eating less salt, foods that tasted normal before will start to taste noticeably salty. This recalibration makes the lower intake feel less like deprivation over time.