Feeling overwhelmed and anxious after learning you need heart surgery is normal. But making healthy diet and lifestyle changes beforehand can empower you and help you recover faster. It will also give you a running start toward a new, healthier life after surgery.
Keep reading to learn about:
- The best forms of exercise before heart surgery.
- A heart-healthy diet before heart surgery.
- Questions to ask before open heart surgery.
Diet, Lifestyle, and Heart Health
You may need heart surgery for an irregular heartbeat, a heart valve problem, or a blocked artery in your heart. Regardless, following a heart-healthy diet and lifestyle starting as soon as possible is essential. Doing so can improve your heart’s health now and keep it healthy after your surgery.
Certain diet and lifestyle factors increase your risk of heart disease or a heart attack:
- Being overweight or obese.
- Being physically inactive.
- Drinking large amounts of alcohol.
- Eating a diet high in saturated fats and processed, packaged, or fast foods.
- Living with chronic stress.
- Smoking.
These risk factors raise blood pressure and cholesterol, causing your heart to work harder and blocking blood flow in your arteries. Replacing these harmful habits with healthier ones is crucial for long-term heart health, and it’s never too late to start.
Heart Surgery Nutrition Plan
Heart surgery dietary recommendations focus on foods to improve your cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, and weight.
A heart-healthy diet features whole or minimally processed foods, healthy fats, and many plant-based foods. To start, stock your kitchen with:
- Fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables.
- Healthy fats from olive oil and avocados.
- Lean proteins like fish, poultry, eggs, and tofu.
- Legumes (beans) like kidney, black, or pinto beans, lentils, and chickpeas.
- Low-fat dairy or nondairy substitutes like low-fat Greek yogurt, 2% milk, or almond milk.
- Nuts and seeds, including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, peanuts, chia, pumpkin, sunflower, and flaxseeds.
- Whole grains like oats, barley, quinoa, and whole wheat bread or cereals.
These foods are full of healthy fats and packed with fiber, which helps lower your cholesterol and balance blood sugar. They’re also low in sodium and high in potassium and other minerals that promote healthy blood pressure.
Heart-healthy foods are also filling, so they promote gradual weight loss and heart surgery weight management. Finally, they’re rich sources of naturally occurring antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds that can protect your heart and blood vessels.
Try to eat a variety of these foods each day and at each meal to get the most out of your heart-healthy diet. For example:
- For breakfast, eat a bowl of oatmeal topped with Greek yogurt, fresh fruit, and chopped almonds.
- For lunch, enjoy a steaming bowl of homemade vegetable, bean, and barley soup with whole-grain crackers.
- Try avocado toast sprinkled with pumpkin seeds and topped with sliced tomato for a snack.
- At dinner, eat a piece of grilled salmon with roasted broccoli and a baked sweet potato.
- And if you have room for dessert, enjoy some fresh berries drizzled with dark chocolate (a little bit is heart-healthy!).
Adopting this way of eating permanently after heart surgery is vital. A heart-healthy diet isn’t an on-off diet but rather a long-term way of eating.
Foods to limit before heart surgery
Make sure you avoid these foods (or only eat them once in a while). They’re high in unhealthy fats, sodium, and excess calories, so they’re not heart-healthy foods:
- Cheese.
- Desserts like cake, pie, or cookies.
- Fast food, especially burgers, fries, chicken tenders, fried fish, and pizza.
- Frozen dinners or other frozen or packaged meals (even those low in calories)
- Ice cream.
- Packaged salty snacks like chips.
- Packaged side dishes like mixed seasoned noodles or rice dishes.
- Regular cold cuts like bologna, salami, or ham.
Exercise Before Heart Surgery
Regular daily exercise is another key component of a heart-healthy lifestyle. Exercise promotes a healthy weight and strengthens your heart, lungs, and blood vessels, reducing your risk of a heart attack or stroke.
However, talking to your doctor about exercising before heart surgery is critical, especially if you haven’t been physically active. Your doctor may recommend waiting until you’ve healed from surgery and your heart is healthier. They might also recommend supervised exercises like stretching or walking slowly on a treadmill.
When you get the green light on exercise, aim for about 30 minutes of moderately paced activity most days of the week. These are great forms of exercise for promoting heart health:
- Chair exercises or yoga.
- Cycling on a stationary bike.
- Pilates.
- Strength training with light weights.
- Swimming.
- Walking.
- Yoga.
If you’re starting an exercise routine, you might find it more enjoyable if you do it with a friend or neighbor. Also, consider joining a gym or YMCA, or ask if your community center has appropriate fitness programs.
About Heart Surgery Weight Management
Any surgery has a higher risk of complications if you’re very overweight, so your doctor may recommend weight loss before surgery. The good news is if you follow a heart-healthy diet and start exercising, you should lose weight easily.
Don’t severely restrict your calories or go on a “crash diet” before surgery. Nurturing your body before and in the weeks after surgery is essential to helping it recover and heal.
Before your surgery and in the days afterward, make sure you are eating plenty of:
- Protein to help with wound healing. Try to have some with each meal and snack. Good sources include fish, poultry, eggs, and Greek yogurt. If you don’t have an appetite after surgery, try smoothies with fruit, Greek yogurt, and protein powder.
- Vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins A, C, and zinc, help repair tissue. Leafy green and orange vegetables, eggs, pumpkin seeds, and lentils provide these nutrients. Ask your health care provider if you should add a supplement.
- Omega-3 fats for immune function and anti-inflammatory effects. Oily fish like salmon, sardines, mackerel, and anchovies provide plenty of these healthy fats.
- Complex carbohydrates for fuel. Even though you aren’t physically active in the hospital, your body still needs high-quality fuel to recover from heart surgery. Choose plenty of whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables to provide a steady supply of glucose without spiking your blood sugar.
Questions to Ask Before Open Heart Surgery
Based on your condition and needs, your surgeon may do a minimally invasive or open heart surgery. Minimally invasive surgery requires tiny cuts, so your hospital stay and recovery are faster and easier.
Open heart surgery requires a larger chest incision, and you may stay in the hospital for up to a week. A full recovery from open heart surgery can take up to 12 weeks. However, many people can return to work or light activities after six weeks.
Before your surgery, talk to your health care team to learn about heart surgery pre-op instructions, including:
- How long will you stay in the hospital?
- Should you exercise or start a new exercise program before surgery?
- Should you stop prescription medications before surgery?
- What activity restrictions will you have after surgery?
- When should you stop eating and drinking before your surgery?
After heart surgery, you probably won’t have a big appetite or the energy to prepare meals. Therefore, it’s helpful to prepare and plan.
Make a list of things to buy before open heart surgery. Have some healthy, home-cooked meals in your freezer and ingredients for easy, heart-healthy meals, like smoothies or scrambled eggs, on hand.
One of the most important things to do after surgery is to participate in a cardiac rehab program. This is a great way to learn more about how diet, exercise, and a healthy lifestyle affect your heart health. And they help reinforce the positive changes you’ve already started to make.