Examining Diets with Absolutely,

Some foods and some diet plans are so obviously good for your body that no
one questions their ability to keep you healthy or make you feel better when
you’re ill. For example, if you’ve ever had abdominal surgery, you know all
about liquid diets — the water-gelatin–clear broth regimen your doctor prescribed
right after the operation to enable you to take some nourishment by
mouth without upsetting your gut.
Or if you have type 1 diabetes (an inherited inability to produce the insulin
needed to process carbohydrates), you know that your ability to balance the
carbohydrates, fats, and proteins in your daily diet is important to stabilizing
your illness.
Other proven diet regimens include
The low-cholesterol, low-saturated-fat diet: The basic version, known as
the Stage 1 Diet, is used as a first step in lowering a person’s cholesterol
level. The diet limits cholesterol consumption to no more than 300 milligrams
a day and total fat intake to no more than 30 percent of your
total daily calories (see Chapter 16).
326 Part V: Food and Medicine
A nifty bonus to this diet is that it’s a relatively painless way of losing
weight.
The high-fiber diet: A high-fiber diet quickens the passage of food
through the digestive tract. This diet is used to prevent constipation. If
you have diverticula (outpouchings) in the wall of your colon, a highfiber
diet may reduce the possibility of an infection. It can also alleviate
the discomfort of irritable bowel syndrome (sometimes called a nervous
stomach). Extra bonus: A diet high in soluble fiber also lowers cholesterol
(see the preceding section, “Defining Food as Medicine”).
The sodium-restricted diet: Sodium is hydrophilic (hydro = water; philic =
loving). It increases the amount of water held in body tissues. A diet low in
salt often lowers water retention, which can be useful in treating high
blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and long-term liver disease.
By the way, not all the sodium in your diet comes from table salt. Check
out Chapter 16 for a list of the sodium compounds used in food.
The extra-potassium diet: People use this diet to counteract the loss
of potassium caused by diuretics (drugs that make you urinate more frequently
and more copiously, causing you to lose excess amounts of potassium
in urine). Some evidence also suggests that the high-potassium diet
may lower blood pressure a bit.
The low-protein diet: This diet is prescribed for people with chronic
liver or kidney disease or an inherited inability to metabolize amino
acids, the building blocks of proteins. The low-protein regimen reduces
the amount of protein waste products in body tissues, thus reducing the
possibility of tissue damage.