– Today, I'd like to talk
about sodium or salt intake. The national guidelines
recommend 2,000 milligrams of sodium intake. This helps with blood pressure,
which is an important issue with all of our cardiac patients. Another issue that we
don't consider as patients is the stiffness of the heart. We call it in cardiology
as diastolic dysfunction. This is where the heart is
pumping adequately as a pump but the relaxation is stiff. So in other words, it's a stiff heart and everybody over 50
years old has some amount of a stiff heart. There could be mild, medium,
or severe amount of stiffness.
This could cause people to
feel more short of breath because this increases the
pressure within the heart and the filling chambers
then into the lungs. And so by decreasing your sodium intake down to 2,000 milligrams, this decreases the pressure in your heart, and it helps you to feel better. So fatigue, shortness of breath improves with the decrease of sodium intake. Salt intake is an acquired taste. And so by decreasing salt, you may feel like food
does not taste as good but over a short period of time you will get used to
eating a low sodium diet and food does take tastes
a little bit different but it's not too bad. For example, if you go to a restaurant, in a single dish there can to
be 2,000 milligrams of sodium and so you could have
up to 5,000 milligrams of sodium a day.
People don't feel good with this, and they feel more short
of breath with exercise. By decreasing your sodium
down below 2,000 milligrams, we feel much better and it
will be an important portion of your cardiac health. (soft music).
