The bad news: DVT can lead to serious illness, disability, or, in severe cases, death. Additionally, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a spike in the rate of blood clot patients coming into hospitals. “I would say in June or July of 2020, we started to see a large number of patients coming to the emergency room with blood clots, either with clots in the legs, or clots in the lungs,” says Chadi Alraies, MD, MPH, a cardiologist at the Detroit Medical Center, adding that infection with the COVID-19 virus sometimes triggered the production of antibodies that caused inflammation and resulted in blood clots. The good news: DVT is both preventable and treatable. One simple step you can take right now to lower your risk is to change your diet. “Some foods do increase the risk for blood clots,” says Steven Masley, MD, the author of The 30-Day Heart Tune-Up. On the flip side, he says, adding certain other foods to your diet can help prevent DVT. Below are seven dietary tips to fight DVT.
1. Drink Up to Keep Blood Flowing Smoothly
Dehydration can cause your heart to work harder to pump blood through the blood vessels to the muscles, according to the American Heart Association. To stay well-hydrated, women should consume an average of 91 ounces (oz) of water from all beverages and food daily, and men an average of 125 oz, according to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine guidelines. “I recommend a lot of hydration, at least 1.5 to two liters a day of fluid liquid,” says Dr. Alraies. “But we recommend them not to be carbonated or high carbohydrate drinks.” One way to gauge if you’re on track is to check your urine. If it is a pale yellow color or clear, you are probably drinking enough, per the Cleveland Clinic. If it’s amber-colored or darker, you’re probably not and should increase your daily water intake.
2. Sip Grape Juice or Red Wine to Make Platelets Less Sticky
Moderate amounts of red wine or purple grape juice daily helps keep blood platelets from sticking together and forming clots, thanks to powerful antioxidants called polyphenols in purple grapes, according to a review of previous studies published in the Journal of Nutrition. Alraies stresses that wine should be consumed in moderation, however. “One glass of wine a day won’t do any harm,” he says. “But beyond that, it affects the liver, which is the factory for all anticoagulation and blood thinning in the body.”
3. Flavor Food With Garlic to Stop Trouble Before It Starts
Garlic is thought to have many health benefits, including possibly breaking up harmful clusters of platelets in the bloodstream, according to research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The best way to reap that benefit from garlic, the research shows, is to crush the raw cloves to release their beneficial compounds, then eat them raw, oven-roasted, or boiled for three minutes or less. It’s important to talk to your doctor about how much garlic you should eat if you are taking a blood thinner already, as garlic could interfere with the medication’s effectiveness.
4. Avoid Unhealthy Fats, Sugar, and Salt to Keep Circulation Moving
The same foods that in excess cause plaque buildup in blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart disease, can also increase the risk of DVT, Dr. Masley notes. That means you want to stay away from unhealthy trans fats, sugar, and excess salt, according to the American Heart Association. “These are all foods that increase inflammation,” Masley explains. At first glance, these culprits may not be obvious in packaged foods, so study ingredient labels carefully. Sugar comes in many forms — honey, molasses, corn syrup, brown rice syrup — and you want to limit your intake of all of them, Harvard Health says. Sugar can be listed under aliases, too — lactose, fructose, barley malt, malt powder, ethyl maltol, and fruit juice concentrate, to name just a few. Trans fats may be hidden in the ingredient label as partially hydrogenated oil and hydrogenated oil. Check Nutrition Facts labels and choose the option with the least amount of sugar, sodium, and trans fat per serving.
5. Use Virgin Olive Oil
Consuming olive oil at least once a week reduced platelet activity in nonsmoking obese adults (those with a body mass index, or BMI over 30), a sign that this oil may lower the risk of a blood clot, according to a National Institutes of Health–funded study presented March 7, 2019, at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions. Similarly, an earlier study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that antioxidants called phenols in virgin olive oil helped prevent blood clots. In the study, people who consumed virgin olive oil with a high phenol content had lower levels of a substance that promotes blood clots. So a good DVT food choice would be to forgo butter and dip your bread in olive oil — the virgin kind — instead.
6. Make Leafy Greens a Routine
If you take warfarin, an anticoagulant, then foods high in vitamin K, which plays a role in forming blood clots, can interfere with your medication. “Too often, doctors tell patients to avoid all green leafy veggies,” Masley says. “Instead, eat leafy greens consistently every day.” The important thing is to eat the same amounts of vitamin K–rich foods each day to maintain a consistent level of the mineral in your body. According to the National Institutes of Health, the recommended average daily intake of vitamin K from foods is 122 micrograms (mcg) for women and 138 mcg for men. For reference, one cup of cooked spinach contains about 145 mcg of vitamin K. For patients who are on novel anticoagulants such as rivaroxaban and apixaban, no such restriction is in place.
7. Limit Animal Fats in Your Diet
Masley says the saturated fats in full-fat dairy and fatty meats have also been linked with increased inflammation. Alraies agrees. “Fatty food we eat, like burgers, deep-fried food, red meat, or a high cholesterol diet, is pro-inflammation,” he says. “It creates an inflammatory process in the body and this process can be an added risk for patients who develop blood clots.”
