Healthy Diet for the Transplant Patient

After a heart transplant it is very important to maintain a healthy diet.  Sodium and fats must be limited to prevent fluid retention and weight gain.  Reading and understanding food labels is imperative for making good food choices.  Check out the American Heart Association's article on this:  Understanding Food Nutrition Labels.

We found that following advice from the heart rehab clinic at University of Texas Southwest led us to shopping the perimeter of grocery stores.  The doctor mentioned "you can't eat anything canned or boxed."  That is mostly true, however, we are finding more and more low-sodium and low-fat items down those aisles. We even found salt-free tortilla chips and potato chips!  

So, here are recommendations we received from dietitians and rehab professionals:

1.  Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.  Of course, in order to reduce sodium these need to be fresh, frozen or canned with "no salt added".  Levi likes fruits and vegetables so this was not a huge change for him but he also likes to cook.  Check out our recipe page for some interesting ways he has learned to prepare vegetables!  Spinach pancakes, anyone?

While on blood thinners the amount of vitamin K safe to consume may be limited.  Foods containing moderate to high amounts of vitamin K include:  

beef liver

broccoli

Brussels sprouts

chicken liver

collards

endive

green leaf lettuce

kale

mustard greens

parsley

romaine

spinach

Swiss chard

turnip greens

Some foods that contain lower amounts of vitamin K are:

asparagus

iceberg lettuce

red cabbage

soybean oil

2.  Eat whole grains.  My first thought, of course, is bread.  However, it's amazing how varied the amount of fiber there is in different breads.  We learned to check the nutrition labels and choose bread with the highest amount of fiber per slice.  Be careful because some brands will list 2 slices of bread as a serving and all nutrients are listed as such.  If this is the case the amount of fiber per serving will need to be divided by the number of servings to get the amount per slice.  Try to find a bread with at least 4 grams of fiber per serving.  

3.  Maintain a low-salt and low-fat diet.  As mentioned above, avoid canned and processed foods as much as possible.  Most of them contain huge amounts of salt.  For instance, a cup of cooked dry kidney beans has only 4 mg of sodium but a cup of canned beans has over 900 mg.  

Levi was instructed to keep his daily sodium intake under 2000 mg.  That sounds like a lot but it's really not.  One level teaspoonful of salt contains approximately 2400 mg of sodium.  

Check out these tips for reducing salt in your diet from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood institute.

4.  Limit alcohol intake.  Alcohol and many after-transplant medications are broken down by the liver and cause damage.  This can lead to liver failure.  The medications cannot be avoided, so avoid the alcohol.