Bulldinkie, my prayers are going out for you and your husband. My husband had his first heart attack, that we knew of, in 1987 when he was 38. He was extremely athletic, got a lot of the right things for exercise, not overweight, never smoked, didn't drink, minimal fast food, low cholesteral, but blood pressure a little high and did everything they tell you to do to avoid heart attacks. He wound up having 5 by pass surgery but never really got back to normal. At that time we did start to follow a healthy heart diet. About 2004, he had another heart attack while we were laying the foundation for our house. Got him to the hospital and it lasted for three days. We never imagined a heart attack could last that long without killing you. The team of doctors from IU said there was nothing they could do for him and wouldn't put him on the transplant list, but his cardiologist at the VA wouldn't give up and did manage to get him on the heart transplant list. A year and a half later, he got his transplant. My DH changed his diet himself. He became a vegetarian while waiting for the transplant. We think it was the only way he made it while waiting. He cut out salt himself and now if anything has the salt in it, he can taste it and doesn't like it. He's eight years out from his transplant and everyone is surprised he made it past the first seven as a lot don't. He doesn't eat many sweets, his diet is extremely low in fat, but I do use olive oil occasionally and his salt intake is primarily what is natural in food, not what is added. He does eat salt on his eggs and potatoes, but a minimal amount. He's healthy and happy. His doctors think he's a miracle for many reasons. Don't give up and don't let him give up. You'll both benefit from the salt free diet and you'll not even miss it.

Shaun, We try to keep our sodium between 1000 to 1500 mg/day, so I know where you're coming from! It's tough at first, but we found that after about 4-6 weeks your taste buds start to change and the lower salt food starts tasting much better. So if you've just been doing this for a month or so, there's light at the end of the tunnel. You asked about eating out: that's tough but not impossible, even if your budget doesn't run to higher end restaurants that will essentially cook anything you ask for, from scratch. We've had some luck with Macaroni Grill (but you have to be kind of emphatic with your server about your request.) They may sort of think you're just being picky, not that you have a serious medical need. In our case it is literally a matter of life or very serious consequences. My DH is the one with the restriction, but I follow it, too, for solidarity and simplicity. He usually makes the request, then I follow up with clear statement to the server about how important it is that nothing be pre-seasoned. Or if it has been already (vegetables are a big prob here as they are parcooked in salty water during prep) I ask that the food be rinsed very well in running water then briefly reheated. You also can usually expect that you're getting a bit of left-over seasoning from previous food cooked on the same hot top or grill. We just make allowances for that. We never eat restaurant bread as as it is very high in salt - often higher than other commercial breads. This is because most "restaurant-made" breads are actually from commercial mixes where salt has a role in ingredient shelf life and simplified gluten-handling at the restaurant. If we don't know about the bread, we just ask that it not come to the table. Baked potatoes, though naturally low in salt can be high if they are salt-baked, so ask about that. Pizza and pasta sauces ar pretty much out, too. (Except for homemade, of course.) And almost all sauced dishes are too complex to parse and usually loaded with fats, as well. We save those kind of dishes for at-home cooking where we can control the sodium. For instance, I make Pad Thai at home, but would never risk it in a restaurant. However, grilled chicken breast, or steak, or broiled fish are good bets. Plain salads (sans dressing and croutons) are usually do-able. Vegs. that are not parcooked are OK, too. We don't restaurant desserts for other reasons, so that's not an issue for us. If it was, i think we'd ask for it in a take-away container and eat it at home in smaller quantities. For chain restaurants when traveling, we've had excellent success at Ruby Tuesday's. They are invariably pretty accomodating about our needs and their salad bar is vast and allows one to chose. We also make a point of speaking to the manager after the meal to praise their flexibility; it's apparently a corporate policy to meet low-sodium requests with equanimity. And as a rule that works. Are you aware of the several excellent very low sodium cookbooks? I can post some names of ones I've found useful, if you need them. I'm sure you realize by now that what "normal" people consider low sodium is way over the top when you're on a medically necessary low sodium diet. I am on a nagging campaign to get the big cooking mags to lower their recipes' sodium content. Fine Cooking at least posts the sodium content in the back of their mag. Cook's Illustrated still has their head in the sand and some of the recipes are absurd (even for people with no sodium restrictions.) Are you listening, Cook's Illustrated? Get with the program! I noticed that there was mention of Morton's Lite Salt. Be sure your doc OK's that for you. People on medical salt restrictions often can't use that safely because of the higher potassium levels. Sorry! For household salt, I use Diamond Crystal Kosher salt. It's 290 mg for each quarter teaspoon. About half of what ordinary table or Morton's Kosher is. It's not that it's less salty -salt is salt - it's just that texture makes it fluffier, so less sodium when measured by volume. And the larger volume makes it easier to measure and control. I also use a tiny scooch of Maldon Sea Salt, as a finisher just before serving on some things. Again its crystalline structure makes it different, and I think adds a useful "hit" of saltiness, even at tiny quantities. After endlessly fiddling around with my regular set of measuring spoons trying measure teeny quantities accurately, I found a set of tiny scoops (with silly cute-sy names) that I have calibrated so I can add 25-50 mg of salt accurately. And accuracy is important when you're banging up against a firm limit that isn't just your taste buds. (And as an aside if I know we're planning to eat out in the evening, or while traveling I double down on the salt restriction earlier in the day to make sure we have room for a bit of a splurge later-or restaurant food that isn't what it seems.) Early on I was pretty intensely focused, but after a couple of years, I've relaxed a bit and some very salty things are regularly served here, just in very small quantities and/or well-balanced with other things. Our diet rules are also much more complex than simple salt restriction because of other medical/diet issues, so I have had to learn where to be flexible and where to find ways to make food inviting and tasty. After all you'll starve to death faster than hypertension will kill you if you got so bummed out about your food that you stopped eating it with relish. I was too scared to try this at first and probably too rigid about the rules and not in a good way, according to my DH! As for specific (tasty) prepared products with lower-than-expected salt levels: I can share some that I've found, but maybe we should start a new thread so others trying to find the info can access it easily. I spent so much time in my supermarket peering at label after label that I eventually attracted the manager who thought I was doing something nefarious. And I've found that even on familar products that you're used to using you need to re-check the label when you buy new containrs as the companies often reformulate the products and upping the salt level is a favorite trick. If you find that be sure to call and give 'em a piece of your mind about it! We do use some prepared/convenience foods, but we choose them very carefully and often divide an entree into two portions and add it to a big salad and home-cooked veg. to fill out the meal. Some days you just need the convenience factor. Some, but by no means all, of the Annie's brand of lower sodium products pass muster. A few prepared foods have separate sauces that you can add after cooking in the MW. If they've got the sodium levels broken out by with and without sauce, then you will likely find that adding half or less of the sauce brings you in at a "low-enough" level for use. There's one brand of exceptionally tasty canned tuna with only 25 mg of sodium/serving. (Without exception so far all of the no-salt-added tuna we've tried was ghastly.) The problem with our fave brand of tuna is that it's pricier, but then since we cook mostly from scratch I figure it evens out as scratch cooking is sooo much cheaper. Eden makes no-salt added canned beans in many varieties, which are quite good in a pinch (not as good as home-cooked, though.) Muir Glen has an ever-growing line of canned tomato products with no added salt that are great (love, love love the fire-roasted no-salt-added stuff!) Both Pacific and Imagine aseptic-packed soups have low(er) sodium versions that are quite good (still 300 mg/400mg per 1 cup, though). I keep some on hand, always. Try all your available broth and stock options to find one that you like. The quality of the low-salt versions varies, as does how low is low. Try ethnic chinese and oriental markets for the lowest-sodium soy and nouc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce) versions. They are always labeled in comprehensible ways, even if just in chinese or japanese. Don't get too discouraged by the "you can't make bread without salt" common knowledge. Yes, you can, but it usually takes some fiddling around with each recipe to hit the sweet spot. Sometimes a lot of fiddling, and wasted ingredients. I also find that low-salt cheese is not great, so we reserve some of our salt "allowance" for regular, even high salt cheese when it's called for. As an example I often grate Piave Vechio (a very high salt 560 mg/oz, extremely high flavor) cheese over a plain jane salad or soup or pasta. I use a microplane grater and find that a very small quantity makes a huge cheesy taste, often adding only 50-100 mg to the overall dish, but to great effect. Cottage cheese is problematic: the no salt added stuff is too bland, but the regular stuff too high. I solve that by buying both and mixing by volume. Half no-salt and half regular comes in right on the money. (BTW, Nancy's brand makes a fantastic cultured - very tangy - type of cottage cheese. That also can be added to the commoner no-salt stuff to jazz it up.) You also need to watch simple stuff like ordinary frozen without sauce vegetables. Some have silly amounts of sodium added. For instance one big brand (Birdseye???) has has peas with both 90 mg/serving and 0 mg/serving. The 0 mg version is just fine - not sure why you need the extra salt anyway. Finally, I found that it was always useful to keep a supply of tasty, reliable easy to fix things on hand so that a recipe adjustment that flops, or a long day with no thought to dinner isn't a catastrophe. That's my version of convenience foods. L

Annie, i wasn't attempting to "pile on" or "pick a fight". I feel that lpink and the others who suggested eating plenty of fruit offered well meaning advice about general good eating habits. However, in this case, they were potentially, er, lethal ideas. In Dody's second sentence of her first post she states that her husband has high potassium. I also agree that Dody is smart enough not to take our advice. With the range of problems that her husband is facing, his diet, unfortunately, needs to be very limited and directed by his MD and RD who have full information and who can continue to monitor his potassium level. I was reading quite a bit more into what Dody said than lpink saw based on my training and the recognition of an entirely too familiar pattern. Lpink and the other fruitophiles couldn't really be expected to understand the downside to their advice, because it's not something that they would know about. I don't normally provide medical advice because I don't have enough information and because it would be improper anyway, but in this case "splurging" on fresh fruit made me cringe and reflexively say "no!" Believe it or not, I've actually seen loving, well meaning family members attempt to cure kidney problems with "juicing". Everybody knows that fruit is "healthy", right? For those of us with reasonably healthy kidneys and normal blood sugar it is! The "DASH" diet is a diet that is deliberately high in potassium. For most people it's a great diet, but not for Dody's DH, unfortunately. A lot of non-medical people may not realize that too much potassium in the blood can be life threatening. On the gardening forums someone may recommend a favorite plant and someone else may recommend against it and no hard feelings, but diet beliefs are often very personal. Here is a link that might be useful: Hyperkalemia -- The Mayo Clinic

thanks for the tip! dh eats at least one a day and by the end of the week they're pretty ripe! when he was doing slimfast for breakfast, he's peel and chunk into pieces and freeze...made great thick breakfast shakes (he used strawberries, too...) since i'm low potassium diet can't help him out...