Cardiac diet education is one of the most common nutrition counseling sessions dietitians do. Start here for resources to make life easier.
Low sodium nutrition education
A cardiac diet education can be the difference between a patient who’s in control of their heart health, and someone who’s constantly struggling to get a handle on it. The earlier a person learns how to manage their health conditions, the more likely they are to be able to fully and effectively manage their health.
Unfortunately many people with a heart condition have never had anyone fully explain to them how to manage it well. They know they should cut out salt but they don’t often understand what that really means or how to do that successfully.
However with a few education tips and couple great handouts you can provide an individualized cardiac diet education for every patient who needs it.
3 Essential Cardiac Diet Education Starters
How to do a cardiac diet education
There are 2 things that can give your clients with a heart condition immediate control over their health:
- Knowing how to manage the two parts to a cardiac diet (low sodium and low fat or cholesterol)
- Reading a nutrition facts label for sodium control
Once you get a handle on teaching these things really well, you’ll start to see a lot more confidence and success with your clients to whom you’ve recommended follow a cardiac diet.
Keep reading for a rundown on all the resources you need to support your patients in managing their heart health.
Cardiac Diet Basics
A cardiac diet is the combination of a low sodium and low fat or low cholesterol diet. It’s important to remember that a low sodium diet only reduces the amount of salt in a person’s diet. Each can be useful in different situations and for different reasons.
Although fiber is not officially part of the cardiac diet (low sodium + low fat), it’s a huge help in managing cholesterol levels and weight status.
This handout provides a good explanation of how fiber can be used along with salt and cholesterol management so you can easily work that into your counseling session.
Download this and more simple patient education nutrition handouts HERE.
Cholesterol Basics
Lowering the amount of sodium in a diet is standard for most heart conditions. However, as a dietitian it’s up to you to decide if the low fat part of a cardiac diet is necessary for your client.
You can consider these three things as a starting point in determining if liberalizing fat or cholesterol in their diet would help them reach their nutrition and health goals. Review these 3 things before making your final decision:
- Their weight status
- Their ability to meet the estimated nutritional needs you’ve recommended
- Their general appetite or intake ability
Once you’ve decided on whether or not you’re going to provide cholesterol diet education, you can then use more in-depth nutrition education handouts. Handouts like this will help you easily educate your patients on how to manage their cholesterol intake.
Download this and more simple patient education nutrition handouts HERE.
Low sodium food label
For people with heart conditions, good old fashioned hypertension or renal conditions, the most important part of a nutrition facts label to understand is SODIUM.
Reading a nutrition facts label can be confusing. It’s easy to get caught up in counting calories and fat, thinking this will directly impact their blood pressure. But as dietitians, we know sodium is the only thing that will directly impact their blood pressure.
For this reason, providing education on reading the sodium part of a nutrition facts label is one of the most important things we can do during a nutrition counseling session for a cardiac patient.
Focusing on this single item and explaining it clearly can go a long way to helping someone gain confidence and a stick to a dietary change. This handout does that well by keeping the conversation strictly focused on sodium.
Find this handout and others to support heart health HERE.
And That’s It!
When you start with these 3 handouts a cardiac diet, you can really focus the healthy heart education you do in a way your clients can immediately use and succeed with.
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