My new diet.

To help combat Meniere's Disease I am now on a strict no caffeine, no alcohol and low salt diet. The no caffeine includes no chocolate but I just cannot stick to that one. As for the low salt I am sure it probably doesn't sound that bad does it? Just gotta avoid chips and don't add salt to your food. I wish. No I now have to read every label of everything very carefully to make sure it meets the low salt standard of 120mg or less per 100g. So what does that rule out:

• Bread and bread products like rolls, buns, muffins, crumpets, piklets, apple scrolls, etc (Bread is actually very high in salt. Lucky for me there are a couple of companies that do make a low salt bread alternative, however only one of them is edible and for a while they stopped making it altogether because not enough people wanted low salt bread. That still rules out being able to have rolls, buns, apple scrolls, etc);


• Breakfast cereals (Most breakfast cereals are high in salt. There are a couple of low salt alternatives.);


• Cheese!! (Cheese is extremely high in salt. Yes, all cheese.);


• Asian cooking sauces like soya sauce, oyster sauce, etc;
  


• Cakes (Self raising flour is very high in salt - so anything with self raising flour is out);


• Convenient cooking sauces like pasta sauce (Everything now has to be made from scratch); and


• What I miss most of all... take away & restaurant food! (I have thought of ONE take away possible - fish and chips because it is cooked from scratch and you can ask for no salt to be added. However, I cannot think of a single other possibility. I really miss having take away food as an option. It means no time out from cooking. If anyone can think of any other take away or restaurant options I'd love to hear them.)

Plus of course many other manufactured foods are high in salt while fresh foods like fruit and vegetables are low in salt. So my diet is much healthier than it even has been - eating plenty of fresh fruit and veges and making food from scratch with fresh, natural ingredients. Plus best of all.. it doesn't rule out one of my favourite foods - ice cream!

The truth is most people's diets are way too high in salt. High salt can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease and other health related problems. Sticking to a low salt diet seems to prevent the vertigo from Meniere's Disease from occurring for the majority of suffers. Doctors believe the reason is that Meniere's Disease is caused by fluid retention in the inner ear and high salt in a diet leads to fluid retention.

I don't really care why sticking to my diet stops the vertigo. If it works it's worth sticking with in my opinion. It's just a tricky diet to get used to. Salt is in nearly everything we eat. Even low salt alternatives are generally too high in salt. The low salt diet isn't catered to by manufacturers. So until they do I guess I'll be cooking from scratch - but health wise that's not a bad thing.