Take care of patients with edema at home

In the course of treating patients with symptoms of edema, in addition to implementing the general principle such as ensuring the quality and proportion between the nutrients, the diet of the day divided into many meals, soft foods, easy to digest, stimulate the taste of patients . the restriction of salt intake is a very good therapy to help patients quickly recover or reduce the progress of the disease, reduce dangerous complications.

However, depending on the specific disease, it is applied to patients with an absolute salt restriction diet or relatively salt restriction.

Absolute salt-restricted diet : Absolutely limited salt diet is usually applied to patients with acute or chronic glomerulonephritis, patients with severe heart failure, acute edema patients due to causes other.

When applying the absolute salt-restricted diet, the patient must eat completely, when cooking is not allowed. In addition, abstain from natural foods that are available in salt such as sea fish, cow's milk, eggs, carrots and spinach. Foods suitable for these patients are sugar porridge, soy milk, boiled vegetables, fresh fruit juices.

Limiting salt intake is a very good therapy to help patients recover from edema.(Photo: BBC)

Relatively salt-restricted diet : patients who need this diet include people with persistent edema, such as mild heart failure or fatty kidney disease, or patients taking corticosteroids.

Relatively salt-restricted diets should not add salt when preparing food, but are allowed to eat natural foods that contain salt, such as meat, eggs, cow's milk, spinach, carrots . Processing in the form of soup, porridge is thick or thin depending on the preference of the patient. It is also possible to eat egg porridge, minced meat, boiled vegetables, fried fish . to exchange meals for appetizing patients.

In the case of patients with heart failure only mild edema may add a little salt when preparing food but not to eat more than 2g of salt per day.

Doctor DOAN HAI NAM