Becky,
My father has high blood pressure and I am on the high side of normal. I LOVE salt. I put huge amounts of salt on everything...I suck peanut shells to get the salt out of them! If they made salt licks for humans, I would have one!
Get the picture?
That said, I was pretty worried about that combination, so I spoke with a lot of different doctors and nurses and surfed websites. Here's what I learned:
If you have high blood pressure already (you do), then you MIGHT be part of a small group of people who are sensitive to salt. For that small group, eating too much salt can increase their blood pressure.
If you do not have high blood pressure, you will not develop it just from eating salt.
That said, there are tons of other reasons not to od on sodium. I'm just in denial.
My friend, Ange has a kidney problem and is on an extremely low sodium diet. I have been told (in the SBD Forum) that eating a lot of salt retains the water that fills up the (hopefully now empty) fat cells. I'm sure there are other reasons. But the only way to know if you are salt sensitive is to talk with your doctor. If they do not believe you are, you can eat salt...in moderation like everything else.
Me? I've cut my peanut-shell sucking down to every other day.