0:00 Hey, if you have been struggling
with heart failure, you've noticed weight gain, you're feeling tired. I want to help you today
in this video to teach you how to live well with heart failure on a low salt diet. And we're going
to get into that right after this. So when you have heart failure, one of the things that creates
challenges for us is the amount of fluid that's inside our vascular system. So
that's inside your heart that's pumping away into the vessels, the arteries and the veins.
Now I know one of the hardest things is to change our diet. But I want to share with you some of
the benefits of using a low salt diet to help you feel way more empowered and comfortable when you
make these choices. One of the first things is you're taking control of your heart failure and
how you manage it. So you are actually an active participant in in creating a change for you,
that leads to you feeling better, which is amazing.
Now, when you take control of managing your heart failure, and you start to notice that you feel
better, you may also notice the third benefit. And that is that your heart medications are working
more efficiently that you might be able to reduce the number of medications you're on or the dosing
which minimize the side effects. So that's a triple win in my mind. And you'll notice that
you're having troubles with your heart failure related to fluid if you're seeing weight gain. If
you're noticing swollen ankles, if you are feeling really short of breath, these are signs that you
may have too much fluid on the heart. So how do we manage that? We're going to talk about that next.
Now, we all know too much of a good thing is not a good thing. And the same thing goes with salt.
So too much salt is actually bad for your heart failure. And it's going to cause you to feel
slow, tired, you're going to notice weight gain, often in the feet and the ankles, but your abdomen
as well might swell. And so we want to reduce that so you can have a better quality of life.
Now we know that managing your salt intake is one element of your treatment plan.
We definitely want to be monitoring your weight, we definitely want to be monitoring
your activity levels and your medications. But salt intake alone can have significant
impacts. So what are we looking at? First of all, when you're looking at your salt content,
the cans of food that you're going to be looking at, don't often have salt listed in terms of their
percentages, but instead they call it sodium. So we need to be looking at our labels for the word
sodium to see how much is in here. And I'm going to give you a few measurements here.
Now I know that salt is everywhere I know it everyone tells me this so I wanted to share
with you quickly seven categories to be looking at the salt content. Number one, your salt and
seasonings, you're looking for MSG. We've got garlic salt, onion, salt, seasoning salt. Yes,
those are salts, number two salty snacks, your chips, your pretzels, your crackers, number three
pickled foods, all of sauerkraut and of course pickles. Number four restaurant foods. So pizzas,
burgers, hotdogs, fries, I know you think I'm a party pooper But hang on with me for a second.
Number five is packaged foods so our soups, our vegetables, can beans.
Number six is our processed foods often our deli meats, sausage bacon. And number seven is sauces.
So we have ketchup we have mustard and barbecue sauces, all the things that we like to put on
top of our food, we're going to be looking for salt in all of those foods. And I'm going to give
you some guidelines as to how you know which ones are good for you and which ones are not so good.
Now consider yourself to be like a sponge, the more salt you have in your blood vessels,
the more water it's going to hold. And the more water you have, the more work your heart's gonna
have to do. Now listen, I know it can be super hard to eat a low salt diet because for me,
salt is like a food group. I love salt. But I noticed the difference in my body when I have
too much. So let me know below and share your tips and the foods that you have found that have been
lifesavers for you in terms of having a low salt diet to support your heart health.
Now you're strongly encouraged to maintain a few parameters, I have a couple numbers here
on the board in a day, it's 2300 milligrams, which is equal to one teaspoon of salt.
If you're looking at your labels to identify what food is good for you, it's preferential to
choose an item that has less than 200 milligrams per serving. So now let's look at some labels.
So quick tips to get rid of salty diet. Remove the salt from your cooking you don't need salt
in the water. Take the table salt off of the table so you're not using it and replace
it with like a seasoning of some site some sort but watch the label
to make sure you're not substituting one salt for another noun when we're when.
Now when we're looking at the label, the words we want to be looking for are these salt, sodium,
Na which is the chemical for sodium, and NaCl, which is sodium chloride, and if those words
are listed in the first five ingredients, put that food back, it's a high salt food.
So let's compare a few different canned foods. So when we look at the bean, you're going to
notice salt is the word sodium. And this has 420 milligrams per serving, which is a half a cup. And
if you have anything more than 200 milligrams per serving, this would not be an ideal food for you.
But we can also go down into the ingredients. And we'll notice that in the ingredients,
we have water, white beans, liquid sugar, and salt, it's listed in the first five ingredients,
so it's likely to be a high sodium product. Let's compare that with the sliced peaches.
So we look at the ingredients. We have clingstone Peaches, water, sugar, and citric acid. So there's
no salts listed in the ingredients. But we need to come over now to the label
to look to see that there is still actually three milligrams of sodium per serving well
underneath are 200 milligrams, so this would be a perfect product for you to put in your pantry.
Let's look at another protein choice. This is chunk light tuna.
Out here it is ingredients skip tuna, water, and salt. It's the third ingredient of a three
ingredient list. Let's look at the nutritional facts per a third of a cup per serving,
we're looking for the word sodium 160 milligrams, so this would be okay to put into your pantry.
So the key is to read both the ingredient list and look at the breakdown of nutritional value
here in your food to look for that sodium per serving content primarily.
Now how do you know if you've got too much sodium, you're starting to notice that you shouldn't be
looking at this if you've noticed a weight gain overnight. So weigh yourself same time every day,
same amount close after up first thing in the morning. And if in that process, you notice
more than a two pound weight gain in a day, or a five pound weight gain in a week. You need to
check in with your doctor because you may need to have a conversation about the salt in your diet.
So does this mean you have to give up your favorite foods? No, it just means you may need to
be a little bit more creative. So for example, if you'd like popcorn, you can have popcorn without
the salt, you can still enjoy the popcorn. Of course, if you're putting butter on,
you better be looking at that cell content. You can still have hot cereals like oatmeal,
just make sure there's no salt added. You can still have bread, you can still have pasta,
you can still have homemade muffins, but you just need to be looking at how much salt is
being added to it and what is the overall salt content per serving. Because remember,
2300 milligrams in one day, or 200 milligrams per serving of food and you'll be on your way.
Don't forget to subscribe and hit that like button and drop a comment below
and let me know how this has helped you. Now go out there and make it a great day.