I’d rather hit a large pothole on a 40-mile-per-hour bicycle descent than fill this column with the same old same old.

Well, maybe not, but you get the drift.

With that expressed, let me introduce a man I don’t expect you know and something he wrote in his autobiography, Laurent Fignon: We Were Young and Carefree (Yellow Jersey Press, 2010). It’s anything but the same old same old.

And it’s about getting old.

Fignon, one of all-time French cycling greats, was called “The Professor” because he was the only pro of note in the early 1980s who had taken and passed the exams needed to attend college in that country. On top of that, he looked the part.

He kept his thinning blonde locks long and in a ponytail. (He rarely raced with a helmet; they were not yet mandatory.) Instead of wearing the wraparound sunglasses popular in the peloton at the time, he wore Ben Franklin eye glasses.

Anyway, Fignon wrote that getting old gives a cycling pro a “vital advantage,” an “extra edge.” Because as a cycling pro gets older, he becomes “totally aware of all the information his body gives him.”

I too believe that’s true - but in the same way a Darwinian believes in natural selection. That aging cycling pros have to develop total awareness to avoid the equivalent to their sport’s extinction.

No contract offer at the end of the season.

Yes, I know you’re not a cycling pro and may not even do any type of bike riding at all. Even so, and even if you’re the most fervent Fundamentalist who feels Charles Darwin was a dodo, who wants to go the way of the woolly mammoth?

Which is exactly why what you’ll sometimes read here could be seen as the same old same old. But only if it supports something previously suggested.

Like using a salt substitute.

I did so for the first time in 2017 based on a review written by Alicia McDonough, Ph.D., professor of cell and neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Her paper was published in the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism and determined that higher levels of dietary potassium were generally associated with lower blood pressure - regardless of the level of sodium intake.

Before I do so again today, a quick review makes sense. Sodium is the main chemical element found in table salt, virtually all table salt substitutes contain some type of potassium (predominantly potassium chloride), and some are only that.

And I do so again in part as a result of a study published in the February 2024 issue of the American College of Cardiology. The 600 or so participants in it, who were spread across 48 elderly care facilities in China, were about 75 percent male, 71 years of age, and not taking any blood pressure medication.

At the start, all recorded what the study deemed to be normal blood pressure readings, less than 140/90 mm Hg. (Note: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers “normal” to be less than 120/80 mm Hg.) The 600 or so were then divided into two groups.

One used salt; the other, a salt substitute.

After two years, 95 in the salt-use group had developed high blood pressure, but only 60 did so in the salt-sub group. It’s a difference of 36.8 percent.

Moreover, the salt-sub group saw an average 8-point decrease in systolic blood pressure (the top number) and a 2-point decrease in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) when compared to their original readings.

All these improvements occurred despite the study’s use of a salt substitute that was only 25 percent potassium - and 62.5 percent salt. Many, like the one I’ve used for nearly 40 years, contain no salt at all.

By the way, you want your blood pressure numbers to be the CDC’s suggestion since high blood pressure - 130/80 mg Hg, according to the current American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Guideline - has been linked time and again to heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. Which is why I suggested using a salt substitute in 2022 for a second time.

Sometime after a meta-analysis published in Heart that included more than 24,000 participants concluded the use of salt substitutes lowers the risk of death from heart disease or stroke by 11 percent, the risk of early death from any cause by 11 percent, and the chance of developing cardiovascular disease of any kind by 13 percent.

Because of that prior meta-analysis, a new analysis performed by Australian researchers at Bond University in Gold Coast, Queensland using 18 previous studies and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine about a month ago could be seen as more of the same old same old. For this study once again finds that using salt substitutes in place of the real McCoy lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular events, and all-cause death.