Added: 09/28/2006 |
When It Becomes Necessary to Add Restrictions to the Low Protein DietFor someone on a low protein diet the ability to eat 6 servings of starchy foods every day might not seem like a luxury. Yet for someone on the Atkins diet, permission to eat just one slice of bread could seem like a dream. One Pennsylvania man tried the Atkins diet for three days. That first morning he finished his two eggs with coffee, and he longed for toast. He then said to his wife, "Could I have some more salt?"
When the body decreases the amount of nitrogen that has entered the body’s metabolic system, then it lowers the amount of toxin that the blood will carry to the kidneys and liver. A low protein diet thus decreases the amount of toxin that those two organs must help the body to dispose of. That is why protein in diet has become a major concern for doctors who have patients with liver or kidney problems.
The restrictions in a low protein diet would seem to be the reverse of the restrictions in most diets. The lowering of protein automatically removes the amount of fat that is usually found in meat. For that reason, the need to restrict the intake of protein removes any need to restrict the intake of fat.
By the same token, the need to restrict the intake of protein can add to the forbidden foods in a low protein diet. For example, such a diet should allow the patient only a one-half serving of milk per day. Such a diet also requires that the patient avoid high protein baked goods and cereals. Avoidance by the patient of dried beans, green peas and lentils gives that same patient an additional control over the protein in diet.
Yet the three restrictions mentioned above represent only a part of the restrictions in a diet for someone on dialysis. Such an individual has a very restricted diet. Doctors must deal with the fact that such a patient can not eat a diet designed for poor-functioning kidneys. Such a patient must eat a diet designed for a physiological system that has absolutely no kidneys.
For that reason the patient on dialysis needs more than just the standard low-protein diet. A patient on dialysis could need to suffer with restrictions of certain vegetables. For example, some patients on dialysis have been told to avoid eating tomatoes. That restriction serves to limit the number of ways that a necessarily small serving of meat might be enhanced at an evening meal.
In 1969, after one teenage hospital patient had paid a number of visits to the room of a dialysis patient, she found that he longed for a way to make his meals more interesting and more satisfying. He had told his female visitor about the limited serving size for the meat portion of any meal that he ate. He had indicated that his diet left him feeling hungry much of the time.
The female visitor gave the problem some thought, and then she felt that she might have a workable solution. She suggested that the patient try eating pasta with tomato sauce. She thought that pasta could help to stretch the limited meat serving. Her momentary hope for presentation of a workable solution soon became dashed. She learned that her kidney-deprived friend could not eat tomatoes.
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