– Could junk food increase your risk of MS, asthma and eczema? Scientists link SALT to autoimmune diseases for first time (Daily Mail, March 6, 2013):
- First time excess salt has been linked to these diseases, say the researchers
- Salt appears to affect how certain cells in the immune system work
- Mice fed a high-salt diet also had higher levels of inflammation
- Humans did not evolve eating high-salt diets, which may be the problem
The modern diet of takeaways and microwave meals could be to blame for a sharp increase in conditions such as multiple sclerosis, say scientists.
Multiple sclerosis is one of a host of autoimmune diseases, including alopecia, asthma and eczema, where a person’s immune system attacks itself in error.
Now a team of scientists from Yale University in the U.S and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, in Germany, say salty diets could be partly to blame.
‘This study is the first to indicate that excess salt may be one of the environmental factors driving the increased incidence of autoimmune diseases,’ they said.