What to eat after an Angioplasty procedure

[reemona]

My husband underwent an agiogram last week where the doctors treated a blockage in one of the arteries and inserted a stent to keep a good blood flow , he's 51 with no cholesterol or any other disease except being a smoker with a bad family history of heart diseases. he's in a self tailored program to quit smoking.
My question is What type of food  should I be prepare for him on a daily bases in order to prevent such thing of happening again because the risk will always be there.

Thank you

[cath911]

Hello Reemona.  If you go to any cardiac care unit in any hospital and question the patients, you will see a huge variety of risk factors. If you go to several hospitals, you will see this is very common. This is why the risk factor list has grown over the years and is continuing to grow. It is only recently that stress has been added as yet another factor. Why such a long list? well, the answer is obvious if you question patients. If you have just one, not everyone will fit into it, in fact hardly anyone will. If you have 2, then you will still have too many patients with no explanation for coronary heart disease. You need a fairly long list to slot everybody in somewhere. Asking patients you will see those who have never touched a cigarette and at the other end of the spectrum will be those who smoked 60 a day. You will see patients with very low cholesterol, and at the other end of the spectrum those with very high cholesterol. So, I believe your husband may have low or normal cholesterol and still have coronary artery disease. So, this means it must have been caused by other factors and it is important that these are the ones you address. It's no good concentrating on the ones which are not going to make much difference because they were not the initial cause with your husband.
Smoking is very damaging to arteries, especially after years of smoking. When we are young, the body is able to make the repairs quite quickly, but as we age and our arteries stiffen, this process is unable to keep up. The effects of your husband giving up smoking will be astounding. His blood pressure will be more easily controlled by his body, he will have more oxygen circulating making the heart feel more relaxed and he will exchange more oxygen through his lungs with each breath making his breathing easier. Not things we notice when young, but at an older age those benefits will be a god send. Every single organ in the body will benefit from the lack of smoking, including the brain. Stress is also an important factor to look at and if your husband has been stressed in life through work or home life, this can be addressed. It's now accepted that people who move into stressful jobs are more likely to suffer heart problems and cardiac rehabilitation recommend they alter their career to a lower stress level. Even if this means less income, it's worth it for more years of life. What company is worth giving your life to?
Now onto diet. Forgetting cholesterol, we cannot argue that certain foods are very good for the body while others are not. We all know that eating an apple is better for you than eating a bag of crisps. As we age, our body becomes more filled with nasty blighters called free radicals and oxidants. These damage cells and age makes our bodies less able to remove these. This is why an important diet is essential, to help our bodies do the jobs it once found easy. We also need to ensure the body has the right materials to make any repairs and ensure a healthy life. Fruit and vegetables have a lot of the right nutrients for repairs and antioxidants. These are essential for healthy blood vessels. Nuts are also a good option, but some people can be allergic or sensitive to these but just a couple of handfulls a week will be a great resource provider for the body. Omega oils are very good for the blood vessels, and a good source of this is from oily fish, such as mackeral, sardines and pilchards. Tinned tuna is lousy for omega oil so I suggest you do some internet research on fish and omega oils. You only need to have fish once or twice a week, not every day. Lastly I would emphasise you read labels on food products and avoid trans fats totally, these are basically a poison for the blood vessels and watch salt intake. Don't add any salt when cooking. You will be surprised how quickly the taste buds aclimatise to the lower salt levels and after a few weeks your husband will be saying how many things seem salty.
Exercise is vital, a thirty minute walk every day does great things for the heart and body.
Just a gentle walk is fine, it doesn't have to be a marathon.
If you make these changes to his lifestyle, there is a very high likelihood that the progression of the disease will stop. It is not going to improve, but there is every chance it will not get worse. I have seen many angiograms of patients, years apart, who have made lifestyle changes and their disease has not progressed. The angiograms look identical. I hope your husband has success in his smoking habit destruction and I am sure he will have a long healthy normal life if he makes the right changes.
take care

[cblmn7]

you can also google heart healthy diets on the net when i first had my stents the hospital set me up with a heart healthy diet plan lots of good recipes

[mammo]

In order for your husband to have a blockage in his arteries, he has high cholesterol.  When plaque is building in one area, it is building in others.  He needs to quit smoking, and eat more fruits and vegetables, no fried or greasy foods, nothing with trans fat.  He is young to be having a stent already so he needs to get very serious about this.  Stop smoking, exercise, lower stress, and eat healthy.