High-salt diet is bad for health, say numerous studies, but a significant research now reveals that dietary salt could have a biological advantage -- defending the body against invading bacteria.

They found that a high-salt diet increased sodium accumulation in the skin of mice, thereby boosting their immune response to a skin-infecting parasite.

The findings suggest that dietary salt could have therapeutic potential to promote host defence against microbial infections.

Till now, high-salt is clearly known to be detrimental for cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

"Our study challenges this one-sided view and suggests that increasing salt accumulation at the site of infections might be an ancient strategy to ward off infections, long before antibiotics were invented," explained first study author Jonathan Jantsch, microbiologist at Universitatsklinikum Regensburg and Universitat Regensburg in Germany.

A clue to this mystery came when the team noticed an unusually high amount of sodium in the infected skin of mice that had been bitten by cage mates.

Intrigued by this observation, they examined the link between infection and salt accumulation in the skin.

The team found that infected areas in patients with bacterial skin infections also showed remarkably high salt accumulation.

Moreover, experiments in mice showed that a high-salt diet boosted the activity of immune cells called macrophages, thereby promoting the healing of feet that were infected with a protozoan parasite.

The researchers, however, urge caution over the potential health benefits of a high-salt diet.

"Due to the overwhelming clinical studies demonstrating that high dietary salt is detrimental to hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, we feel that at present our data does not justify recommendations on high dietary salt in the general population," Jantsch commented.

"Nevertheless, in situations where endogenous accumulation of salt to sites of infection is insufficient, supplementation of salt might be a therapeutic option," he emphasised.

Moving forward, the researchers will examine how salt accumulates in the skin and triggers immune responses and why salt accumulates in the skin of ageing adults.

"We also think that local application of high-salt-containing wound dressings and the development of other salt-boosting antimicrobial therapies might bear therapeutic potential," the authors concluded.

The paper appeared in the journal Cell Press.

It is well known that in the long run, eating fatty foods is bad for you and can increase your risk of having a stroke or heart attack, but as per a new study, a high-fat diet may actually be beneficial to your health and help to reduce heart attack damage.

WKeith Jones of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine said that the study improves the understanding of the relationship between diet and health, adding learning about how fat, in the short run, protects against heart attacks could help in the development of better therapies

The study, which is not a license to eat a lot of cheeseburgers and ice cream, may provide new insight into the "obesity paradox": Obesity is a major risk factor for heart disease, but once a heart attack or heart failure does occur, moderately obese patients tend to live longer.

In the study, mice were given a high-fat diet (60 percent of calories from animal fat) before experiencing heart attacks. Mice that consumed a high-fat diet for either one day, one week or two weeks before the heart attack experienced about half as much heart damage as mice that ate a control diet. The benefit was greatest among mice that ate a high-fat diet for one week before the heart attack.

But in mice that ate a high-fat diet for six weeks, the protective effect disappeared. Further research is needed to understand why this is so; the reason may be due to the bad effects of a persistent high-fat diet, said Jones.

Proteins damaged by the heart attack are removed from heart cells as if they were garbage, thus increasing the chances the cells will survive. Acutely, a high-fat diet increases levels of a molecule in the blood that activates protective pathways in heart muscle. This increases the readiness of the "garbage trucks," which means that the cell becomes resistant to damage when the heart attack occurs as a result, more heart muscle survives.

First author Lauren Haar added that the study opens a new perspective on the acute effects of a high-fat diet and future work will determine whether these effects are linked to the obesity paradox and whether studying the mechanism can identify therapeutic targets for cardioprotection.

The study appears in the American Journal of Physiology - Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

A new study has examined that people who have low levels of vitamin D are more likely to have diabetes, regardless of how much they weigh.

The study conducted by the Endocrine Society found that people who have low levels of vitamin D are more likely to be obese and they also are more likely to have Type 2 diabetes, prediabetes and metabolic syndrome than people with normal vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and maintain bone and muscle health. The skin naturally produces this vitamin after exposure to sunlight. People also absorb smaller amounts of the vitamin through foods, such as milk fortified with vitamin D. More than 1 billion people worldwide are estimated to have deficient levels of vitamin D due to limited sunshine exposure.

A new study has claimed that a high energy breakfast combined with a low energy dinner helps control blood sugar better than in type 2 diabetics, than a low energy breakfast and a high energy dinner.

The small study included 18 individuals (8 men, 10 women), with type 2 diabetes of less than 10 years duration, an age range 30-70 years, body mass index (BMI) 22-35 kg/m2, and treated with metformin and/or dietary advice (eight patients with diet alone and 10 with diet and metformin).

The results showed that post-meal glucose levels were 20 percent lower and levels of insulin, C-peptide and GLP-1 were 20 percent higher in participants on the B diet compared with the D diet. Despite the diets containing the same total energy and same calories during lunch, lunch in the B diet resulted in lower blood glucose (by 21-25 percent) and higher insulin (by 23 percent) compared with the lunch in the D diet.

Prof. Oren Froy, one of the authors of the study from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that the observations suggest that a change in meal timing influences the overall daily rhythm of post-meal insulin and incretin and results in a substantial reduction in the daily post-meal glucose levels. It may be a crucial factor in the improvement of glucose balance and prevention of complications in type 2 diabetes and lend further support to the role of the circadian system in metabolic regulation.

Prof. Daniela Jakubowicz Jakubowicz concluded that high energy intake at breakfast is associated with significant reduction in overall post-meal glucose levels in diabetic patients over the entire day. The dietary adjustment may have a therapeutic advantage for the achievement of optimal metabolic control and may have the potential for being preventive for cardiovascular and other complications of type 2 diabetes.

The study is published in Diabetologia.

People who consume one or more cans of cold drinks per day are exposing themselves to a potential carcinogen, warns a new study.

The ingredient, 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) - a possible human carcinogen - is formed during the manufacture of some kinds of caramel colour. Caramel colour is a common ingredient in colas and other dark soft drinks.

"Soft drink consumers are being exposed to an avoidable and unnecessary cancer risk from an ingredient that is being added to these beverages simply for aesthetic purposes," said Keeve Nachman, senior author of the study.

Building on an analysis of 4-MEI concentrations in 11 different soft drinks first published by Consumer Reports in 2014, researchers estimated exposure to 4-MEI from caramel-coloured soft drinks and modelled the potential cancer burden related to routine soft drink consumption levels in the United States.

"This unnecessary exposure poses a threat to public health and raises questions about the continued use of caramel colouring in soda," Nachman of Johns Hopkins Center for a Liveable Future (CLF).

Results indicated that levels of 4-MEI could vary substantially across samples, even for the same type of beverage.

While there is currently no federal limit for 4-MEI in food or beverages, Consumer Reports petitioned the Food and Drug Administration last year to set limits for the potential carcinogen.

"This new analysis underscores our belief that people consume significant amounts of soda that unnecessarily elevate their risk of cancer over the course of a lifetime," said Urvashi Rangan, executive director for Consumer Reports' Food Safety and Sustainability Center.

The results were published online in the journal PLOS One.