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Get the Coumadin Cookbook!

Coumadin Book

This indispensable book includes:

• A primer on WHAT a Mediterranean-style diet is and WHY it's great for you
• 95+ delicious Coumadin safe recipes
• Information about managing your diet on Coumadin
• Ingredient and cooking tips throughout the book
• Complete Nutrition Facts, including Vitamin K content, for each recipe

Buy the paperback | Buy the eBook (PDF document)

Questions about ordering? Click here to read the FAQ.

How to order by mail: We are happy to accept personal checks drawn on a US bank for delivery within the United States only. Download the form to order by mail. We regret that we are unable to process orders by phone or ship printed books outside the United States.

Note: This is a revised and updated version of Dr. Harlan's The Dr. Gourmet Diet for Coumadin Users. These are the same recipes with updated Nutrition Information, with the addition of information on a Mediterranean-style diet.

How Much Vitamin K is in...?

Find out the exact amount of Vitamin K (in micrograms) of almost a thousand common foods! Listed both alphabetically and then in order of the amount of Vitamin K in the food, this list will help you know exactly how much Vitamin K you're eating. Just $4.95 for the eBook (PDF) or $12.95 for the paperback. Get your copy now!

It's easy to get answers about health and nutrition! Just send your question by email to [email protected] and Dr. Harlan will respond to selected questions of general interest. Answers will be posted in the Ask Dr. Gourmet newsletter (sign up now!) and archived in the Ask Dr. Gourmet section of the website.

Please note that the Ask Dr. Gourmet feature is restricted to questions regarding food and nutrition. Due to the many questions we receive, not all questions may be answered. For more specific questions about your individual health, please contact your doctor. About Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP, CCMS | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy


 
 

Ask Dr. Gourmet

How can I cook low sodium meals for someone on Coumadin (warfarin)?

Is there a diet plan for a person that needs both low sodium and is on Coumadin? I am finding it very hard to cook for my husband with these restrictions. He has a water retention problem that is quite severe and everything seems to have sodium in it.

Dr. Gourmet Says...

The Dr. Gourmet web site provides a number of resources for you to help your husband eat healthy and watch the amounts of Vitamin K that you are feeding him.

While most recipes on the Dr. Gourmet web site are low in sodium, for those on very low-sodium diets every recipe has a listing in the Special Diet Information section to help you determine if a recipe might be safe for his low-sodium diet. If it is not, there are two alternatives. You can substitute a low-sodium recipe by checking our list of low-sodium recipes, or you can reduce the amount of salt that you add to each recipe.

Because Dr. Gourmet recipes use fresh ingredients that are low in sodium, often simply reducing the amount of salt that is called for by 1/2 or eliminating it altogether can help you with eating less sodium.

Every teaspoon of salt has about 2,300 mg of sodium in it. As a rule of thumb, adding 1/4 teaspoon of salt will add about 575 mg of sodium to a recipe. Because the amount of sodium is reported for every Dr. Gourmet recipe, you can easily decide how much salt to leave out and still meet your husband's targets set by his physician.

The other issue you face is that of the amount of Vitamin K, and each recipe lists the amount of Vitamin K in a serving of each recipe. For foods that are not maede from Dr. Gourmet recipes, there are three lists that you can download in PDF form. They range from a very simple list of foods that have a high or moderate amount of Vitamin K to a complete listing of all ingredients used in Dr. Gourmet recipes with the amounts of Vitamin K listed. You can find those links here:

Basic list:
http://www.drgourmet.com/md/warfarinbrief.pdf

List of foods with relative amounts of Vitamin K:
http://www.drgourmet.com/md/relativewarfarinlist.pdf

Comprehensive list:
http://www.drgourmet.com/md/warfarincomprehensive.pdf

The Ask Dr. Gourmet section on the website has a listing of questions that have been asked by readers like yourself.

You can see that there's a host of information available to you on the Dr. Gourmet website for eating healthy while taking Coumadin.

Thanks for writing,

Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP
Dr. Gourmet

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