The United States dietary guidelines, based on the 2005 Institute of Medicine report, recommend that the general population aim for sodium levels of 1,500 to 2,300 milligrams a day because those levels will not raise blood pressure.
One of the symptoms of the plague was coughing and sneezing, and it is believed that Pope Gregory VII suggested saying âGod bless youâ after a person sneezed in hopes that this prayer would protect them from an otherwise certain death. The expression may have also originated from superstition.
Some people believed that a sneeze causes the soul to escape the body through the nose. Saying bless you would stop the devil from claiming the person's freed soul. Others believed the opposite: that evil spirits use the sneeze as an opportunity to enter a person's body. There was also the misconception that the heart momentarily stops during a sneeze (it doesn't), and that saying bless you was a way of welcoming the person back to life. We now know that sneezing is a reflex action and is most often the sign of something relatively benign, such as a cold or allergy.