This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Black and white teenage girls handle salt differently
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Rates of hypertension and osteoporosis differ among black and white women, which may be related to how salt is handled in adolescence.
Nutrition researchers at Purdue University have found that white teenage girls lose more calcium in their urine than black girls, but both races lose calcium at an accelerated rate when they consume a high-salt diet.
The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
“While we found a racial difference in calcium retention in adolescents, we also confirmed that blacks retain more sodium on a high-salt diet than whites,” said Connie Weaver, PhD, distinguished professor and head of Purdue’s department of foods and nutrition, in a press release. “This proves that salt is processed differently in the races, but too much salt in the diet reduces bone density in both races.”
The research was based on data from participants who attended Purdue’s Camp Calcium, a summer camp funded by the National Institutes of Health designed to investigate calcium metabolism in adolescents. For 20 days, 35 participants ate a controlled diet under 24-hour supervision.
One in four white women in the United States develops osteoporosis, while one in 10 black women develop the disease, Weaver said, but studies show blacks are more susceptible to hypertension.
“Even though salt intake is less critical to blacks with respect to building bones, we still have to be concerned about how sodium affects the heart health,” she said.