Diet taboos for blood clots

High-sodium foods, excessive saturated/trans fats, excessive refined free sugars, and other so-called "taboos" are all personalized adjustments based on individual basic diseases. A blanket taboo may increase the risk of recurrence of blood clots due to malnutrition.

Don’t believe it. I just met a 62-year-old patient with lower limb thrombosis, Uncle Zhang, in the clinic last week. When he was discharged from the hospital, he was told to eat less salty food. He felt that he had endured the clear soup for half a month and secretly ate two meals of pickled radish with sauce elbow. That night, his legs were so swollen that he couldn’t wear socks. When he came back for a checkup, he found that the blood vessel pressure had increased again. Many people's understanding of sodium control is still limited to adding less salt. In fact, the braised meat you usually like to eat, the soy sauce and oyster sauce in takeout, and the soda crackers and plums you grab are all invisible sodium consumers. There are also differences among different schools of thought regarding intake. Mainstream cardiovascular guidelines recommend that ordinary people consume no more than 2g of sodium per day (approximately 5g of table salt). Some European guidelines require patients with thrombosis combined with hypertension to reduce sodium to 1.5g. However, clinical studies have confirmed that as long as you are not on a long-term high-sodium diet, occasionally eating a salty bite to relieve your craving will not directly lead to thrombosis. There is no need to worry about half a spoonful of salt for half a day.

After talking about the salt that everyone is most familiar with, there is another misunderstanding that many people are confused about: can fat be eaten? A few months ago, a 58-year-old aunt was diagnosed with carotid artery plaque. She didn't touch a bite of meat for half a year and only cooked vegetables. However, during the reexamination, her low-density lipoprotein didn't drop much. Instead, she was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia. In fact, not all fats are scourges. Animal saturated fats such as lard, butter, and fat, as well as trans fats in processed foods—that is, the non-dairy cream in milk tea, the shortening in bread, and the margarine in puffed foods—are the ones that should be avoided. They will make the blood thicker, just like the sticky oil mixed in the water pipes, which will easily become clogged over time. However, the Omega-3 in deep-sea fish and the monounsaturated fatty acids in olive oil and nuts are beneficial to the endothelium of blood vessels. Eating deep-sea fish twice a week is much more effective than eating plain water vegetables every day. There is also a controversial point here: the popular low-carb diet school in recent years believes that the impact of saturated fat on blood clots is far less than that of refined sugar. As long as the total calories do not exceed the standard, it is no problem to occasionally use lard to stir-fry a dish. However, mainstream guidelines still recommend that the energy supply ratio of saturated fat should not exceed 10% of the total daily calories. You can flexibly adjust according to your own blood lipid indicators.

What many people tend to overlook is refined sugar. They always think that sweetness has nothing to do with blood clots. In fact, long-term high sugar will corrode the endothelium of blood vessels, just like soaking a water pipe in sugar water. The inner wall is easily corroded and pits are formed, and blood lipids and platelets are easily deposited in the pits to form thrombus. I hired a 28-year-old Internet programmer a while ago. He worked overtime every day and lived on full-sugar milk tea and sweet and sour pork. When a physical examination revealed that he had deep vein thrombosis in his lower limbs, he was confused. He said that he didn't eat fat at all, so how could he get clogged? Of course, it doesn’t mean you can’t touch sugar at all. It’s okay to eat a piece of cake on a friend’s birthday or drink half a cup of iced Coke in summer. WHO recommends that the daily free sugar intake be controlled within 25g, which is only half a cup of milk tea. Don’t just drink it as water every day.

By the way, there is another rumor that has been circulating for many years that I need to get rid of: many people say that patients with blood clots cannot eat egg yolks or tofu, and that high cholesterol will block blood vessels. This is really an old story. As early as 2015, the dietary guidelines of various countries have canceled dietary cholesterol intake restrictions. As long as you have no problem with cholesterol metabolism, eating an egg a day will not increase the risk of blood clots at all. The soy isoflavones in soy products have a protective effect on blood vessels. Unless it is combined with severe renal insufficiency, there is no need to eat it at all.

I have been in the vascular department for almost ten years, and I have seen too many people who did not dare to eat this or touch that because of excessive dietary restrictions. Eventually, their immunity weakened and blood clots recurred. I also saw many people who ate and drank so much that they did not take it seriously and ended up needing surgery. In fact, to put it bluntly, there are so many restrictions on the diet of patients with thrombosis. Don’t read the taboo lists on the Internet every day. Pay more attention to your body’s reaction after eating, and regularly review blood lipids, blood pressure, and blood sugar indicators. This is better than anything else. If you are really greedy and take a bite of what you want, as long as it doesn't happen suddenly, it won't be a psychological burden at all.