Gabrielle Maston, MSc, PhD Candidate
March 6, 2016

The Paleo diet is all the rage these days when it comes to health and weight loss.

But once you’ve had a heart attack, you might find yourself scared, confused, and searching for answers.

You know you need to make diet changes, but is the Paleo diet the best way to reduce your risk of having a second heart attack?

A lot of fad diets prey on the insecurities and vulnerabilities of heart patients wanting to improve their heart health and general well-being.

If you’ve experienced a heart attack or stroke and are overweight, your doctor will often suggest lifestyle modifications to reduce your risk of further heart events.

Lifestyle modifications may include losing weight, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol consumption, and regular exercise to reduce your risk of another heart attack or stroke.

Weight loss isn’t easy and trying to navigate through popular food fads, confusing nutrition labels, and misinformation can often lead to frustration. 

Couple that with the fear of having another heart attack and the outcome is typically inaction – deer-in-the-headlights style procrastination.

Let’s set the record straight: there are many ways to eat healthy.

Healthy diets can range from vegan to meat eating or raw versus cooked food – there really isn’t a perfect or ideal one-size-fits-all diet.

The truth about dietary guidelines

Dietary guidelines have copped a lot of heat from fad diet promoters, but are they actually as “unhealthy” as they say?

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “well, the dietary guidelines claim to be one-size-fits-all,” but actually this is not the case.

You need to bear in mind that dietary guidelines:

  • are government recommendations set for a respective country according to cultural taste preferences and current research.
  • for populations are very different to individual eating styles especially when you are managing a chronic health condition like heart disease.
  • are merely a framework for healthy populations on what foods can be included in an individual diet.
  • do not take into consideration health conditions, metabolic rate, physical activity levels, or individual food tastes and preferences.
  • If the dietary guidelines aren’t necessarily the end-all-be-all nutrition gospel, then is there anything wrong with trying the Paleo diet if you have heart problems?

Paleo diet benefits after a heart attack

The Paleo diet at face value promotes the consumption of fruit, vegetables (preferably organic), lean game meats such as rabbit, kangaroo, free-range poultry, grass-fed beef and fish, and nuts and seeds, all of which are heart healthy foods.

There is no restriction on the amount of food you are allowed to eat.

As long as you omit dairy, grains, legumes, sugar, and processed food, then you are free to eat until you’re full.

The diet is naturally low in added sugar, carbohydrates, and processed foods.

This is good because after a heart attack, it is generally recommended to reduce your intake of processed, high-calorie foods high in refined sugar.

This type of eating style can be beneficial for some people, however there are healthy food groups that are missing, which may be difficult and unnecessary to restrict yourself from – such as dairy, whole grains, and legumes.

In addition, after a heart attack there are other nutrients you should also be eliminating that the Paleo diet does not enforce – such as sodium, trans- and saturated fats.

Paleo diet downsides after a heart attack

Restrictions

No diet is without limitations and the Paleo diet is no exception.

As mentioned above, the Paleo diet omits food groups such as dairy, grains, legumes, and vegetable oils, all of which are healthy foods and the basis of many known healthy heart-protective diets like vegetarian, Mediterranean, and Nordic diets.

Specifically, the Paleo diet is a higher fat diet due to its high allowance of animal fats. It contains more trans and saturated fats because of the high consumption of beef, lamb, and goat, which can increase heart disease risk. We’ll look at this in more detail later.

Cost

For some people on the lower end of the income scale, the cost of eating the Paleo way may pose a problem.

The Paleo diet promotes the consumption of many food products that tend to be expensive– i.e., organic and grass-fed meat, organic vegetables, and nuts and seeds.

Luckily, it’s not imperative that you eat organic produce or grass-fed beef to improve your heart health.