I’ve learned something today that adds complexity to my recent post about the advice for a type of heart disease: that the treatment is ‘fluid and salt reduction’.
It turns out that, in some types of heart disease, fluid reduction is exactly what’s needed because the disease is all about an excess of fluid. So maybe the advice I heard really did mean fluid reduction and salt reduction!
For a non-medical person like me (or for anyone who isn’t an expert in the field being discussed), it’s being precise that matters. The advice ‘fluid and salt reduction’ is vague, and it will be interpreted by different people in different ways. With medical advice, that’s exactly the outcome that’s not wanted.