Comparison of salt intake between the patients with diabetes mellitus and/or hypertension, and healthy subjects

Introduction The increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and borderline diabetes is the urgent global issues due to the social and economic cost, and the shortening of healthy life expectancy. Dietary instruction to the patients for the prevention of exacerbation emphasized the restriction of calorie intake hitherto. It has been reported that the patients with DM are likely to have hypertension than healthy people. Salt intake, which is one of the major causes of hypertension, is higher in Japan than that in Western countries. Therefore, in this study, we investigated that the dietary pattern of Japanese subjects with DM and/or hypertension, and general populations to examine the relationship between the condition of these diseases and the dietary habit. Method Subjects were recruited at the healthcare center in Kyushu, Japan. 1,058 subjects were involved in this study. Administration of the self‐completed questionnaire including the question regarding dietary habit and medical examination were performed in the patients with DM and/or hypertension, and healthy subjects aged 40–79 years. Result 743 (70.2%) male and 315 (29.8%) female subjects were participated in this study. Of them, 100 (9.5%) subjects were DM and 369 (34.9%) subjects were hypertension. 57 (5.4%) of the patients had both diabetes mellitus and hypertension, and healthy control who was free of these diseases were 646 (61.1%) of the subjects. Among the participants, there were significantly more subjects with hypertension in the patients with DM when compared to the subject without DM (57.0% of the DM patients; 32.5% of the non‐DM subjects). The patients with DM had snacks and sweetened beverage less frequent as compared to the non‐DM subjects. The DM patients ate out more frequent than the subject without DM although the DM patients considered the calorie intake more carefully than non‐DM subjects when they eat out. In contrast to the snacks and sweetened drinks, there were no differences in the frequency of having salted food (e.g., pickled food, seasoned cod roe), sources (e.g., soy source, salt, seasoning), and soup (e.g., soup with noodles) between the subjects with or without DM. The subjects with hypertension paid less attention to sugar intake, salt intake, and eating out regardless of the presence of DM. Conclusions Hypertension was more prevalent in the patients with DM as compared to the non‐DM subject. The patient with DM paid more attention to the calorie and sugar intake than non‐DM patient. However, the subjects with hypertension tend to disregard the dietary control even in the hypertensive subjects with DM. In addition, control of salt intake was virtually neglected in all patient groups. These results suggest that the dietary habit has been unchanged before their onset of disease and that the early intervention of the salt control is required for the patient with DM aside from the calorie control because hypertension is one of the major causes of diabetic nephropathy and other diabetic complications.