Diet question

[Barry]

Now, I know that consistency and moderation are the fundamentals, and that so long as you practice those two you don't need to pay too much attention to your diet - that it's better to adjust the warfarin dose to your diet than to restrict your diet to adjust it to your warfarin dose. But...

What about those of us who are rather inconstant and immoderate?

I seldom eat spinach. But what if I had a huge spinach salad this evening?

I seldom drink to excess. But what if I get thoroughly smashed on New Years' Eve?

Wondering if it may make sense to adjust the dose to the diet in the absense of consistency and moderation - i.e. increase the warfarin dosage when gorging on spinach, decrease the dosage taken on New Years' Eve.

 

[Karlynn]

Since it takes 3 days for the change of dose to register in your system, I think making short term dosage adjustments wouldn't be advised and you'd probably send your INR bouncing all over the place. I know that diabetics make dosage adjustments based on what they know their immediate future will contain (several beers, a coffee cake), but insulin is much more fast acting.

I think most of us try to be consistant, but if I'm at a family gathering and my sister-in-law has made her yummy spinach salad - I'm not going to pass that up unless I know that my INR was low on my last test. I just don't have a whole plateful of the salad. If something you've eaten, or drank, is out of the ordinary for you, it should come back into line fairly quicky if you've resumed your usual habits.

 

[catwoman]

Barry:
I don't think just 1 big spinach salad is going to make that much difference. A spinach salad **will** if it becomes part of your daily diet, though.
And I don't think you can adjust your warfarin to accommodate 1 big spinach salad. Al Lodwick can probably determine if my line of reasoning is correct: My guess is you will reap the benefits of the the spinach faster than an increase in your warfarin will increase your INR, since it takes up to 72 hours to show an INR increase/decrease based on warfarin dose adjustment.

Getting "thoroughly smashed" on New Year's Eve? Dunno. Just make sure your head doesn't get physically smashed.
I no longer want to get smashed or wasted. If I'm going to make a fool of myself, I sure want to be able to remember what I did that was so stupid. Did that a couple of times in my 20s. Pretty embarrassing to not remember what went on the night before ...
I now get "smashed" by taking 2 Extra Strength Tylenol PMs. Basically achieves the same thing -- the lights go out, but I feel a lot better when I wake up than if I'd had several drinks. And there's no calories in those caplets!

 

[Karlynn]

I now get "smashed" by taking 2 Extra Strength Tylenol PMs. Basically achieves the same thing -- the lights go out, but I feel a lot better when I wake up than if I'd had several drinks. And there's no calories in those caplets!

ROFL Marsha you are too funny!