If you’ve been diagnosed with heart failure, you’ll want to seriously consider changing your diet as part of your treatment.
A study from the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center shows that after only 21 days on a particular diet, patients with heart failure had improvement.
The diet is called DASH: dietary approaches to stop hypertension.
This is not a gimmicky or strange diet; it’s quite sustainable and can drop high blood pressure (hypertension) as effectively as drugs.
“Our work suggests diet could play an important role in the progression of heart failure,” says Scott Hummel, MD, in the paper.
If you have heart failure, ask your cardiologist if it’s the type with preserved ejection fraction. This is the type that the study focused on.
Heart Failure Patients Who Changed Their Diet
The subjects were mostly in their 60s and 70s and kept food diaries, and also agreed to eat only the meals that were prepared by the University of Michigan Clinical Research Unit.
The diet conformed to the DASH plan, which limits daily sodium to 1,150 milligrams and has other parameters as well.
The DASH diet is high in important minerals like magnesium and potassium.
Dietary Changes Can Help People Manage their Chronic Heart Failure
“The diet itself is simply a balanced diet that is extremely low in sodium due to its lack of processed foods,” says Dr. Keith Kantor, a leading nutritionist and CEO of the Nutritional Addiction Mitigation Eating and Drinking (NAMED) program, which treats substance abuse, mental illnesses and other illnesses.
“Congestive symptoms can be improved and lead to long-term disease management if the diet is followed exclusively.”
Dash to the DASH Diet to help improve management of chronic heart failure.
Dr. Kantor has a PhD in nutritional science and a doctorate in naturopathic medicine, has appeared on CNN and Fox News Channel for his expertise, and has been an advocate of natural food and healthy living for 30+ years.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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