BATON ROUGE — Your kidneys balance the amount of sodium in your body.

If you're getting too much, it builds up in your blood. Your heart works harder to pump and increases blood pressure, raising the risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease.

"Chronic kidney disease — that's the way that we describe what occurs when the kidney has issues with filtering wastes and toxins from the blood," nephrologist Ivan Porter said.

Porter says sodium is added to most processed foods. It's also in a lot of condiments.

"So it's very easy for us to get way more sodium than we need. And it's very easy for us to get a dangerous amount of sodium that has some impact on our blood pressure or our overall health," Porter said.

The recommended daily limit of sodium is 2,300 milligrams or about 1 teaspoon. Dr. Porter recommends reading food labels. And cut back on the saltshaker by using salt-free seasonings.

"Sometimes you can either stop or reverse some of the initial damage that happens with chronic kidney disease. The longer that the process goes on, the more severe it is, the less likely it is to be able to get back to healthy kidneys. And that's when we have to think about things to replace kidney function like dialysis or transplant," Porter said.