Fluid Restriction

Welcome to Kelly, the nurse. Today we're gonna talk about your fluid restriction. People with heart failure or heart disease have to limit their fluids.

Traditionally, for most patients, that's eight cups a day, or 64 ounces a day, or 2 ,000 milliliters a day, or two liters a day. All of those measurements are the same thing. They mean the same thing and what that means is number one that includes all Fluids that includes your morning coffee your milk on your cereal any water juice pop anything that you drink Fluid is fluid and the whole daily amount has to be 2 ,000 milliliters or two liters or 64 ounces or 8 cups for the whole day in order for your body not to get fluid overloaded.

If your doctor has put you on a lower fluid restriction, please follow that. If your kidneys are particularly sick, then you might not even be able to have the 64 ounces. They might decrease that to 48 ounces for example. So always follow what your physician has told you to do. So let's talk for a minute about this fluid restriction.

Why do I have to restrict my fluids? Because your body has a tendency to hold fluid. That's why you have to limit your salt because fluid is attracted to sodium and stays on your body. The other reason is that the fluid that you drink does not eliminate the way it did when you were younger through your kidneys. So if I sit here and drink 10 of these, I just take a million bathroom breaks, no problem. When I'm 80 and drink 10 of these, my body is gonna blow up, I am gonna gain weight and that fluid is gonna go in and around the lungs and cause me to have shortness of and caused me to go to the ER and have to be admitted for heart failure exacerbation.

So, and that has happened to many of you, I know that. So, how do you follow the fluid restriction? Number one, please tell your family, particularly the grandkids, that no, you cannot just drink water all day. I don't know when this happened, but we've really got it in our heads here in America that drinking fluids all day, drinking a lot of water, is really good for us. Not true. It might be a temporary thing. If you went to the hospital with dehydration or an infection, then you might temporarily need to increase your fluids. But trust me, this is not something you do every day, all day, for the rest of your life.

It's the other way around. You have to restrict your fluids. The other thing to know is that this delicious glass of water is almost two full cups. So when your family brings you this glass of water and then another thing here of the water and then another glass of fruit juice,

I see this all the time by the way, that is a patient who's getting too much fluid. So to make it easy, this is how you look at it. These four water bottles are a total of 2 ,000 milliliters, which is your total amount of fluid you can have in a day. Now you can subtract one and add a glass of juice. You can subtract another one and add some orange juice or coffee or milk on your cereal, no problem. As long as your
total daily fluid intake is no more than 2 ,000 milliliters, or 8 cups, or 64 ounces.

If you take a look at the labels, this one has it in ounces, it has it in pints, and it has it in milliliters, 500 milliliters. So four of these is 2 ,000 milliliters. If you're confused, pick one source of measurement and stick with that. If ounces is easier, or milliliters is easier, or cups is easier. So a fluid, a water bottle like this one, I think is a little harder. It's bigger, but the amount of fluids on here is 20 full ounces.

I think these water bottles, these little guys are easier to keep track of because you know four of them is all the fluids including coffee milk and juice that you can drink for the whole day.

So to recap number one do not drink excessive amounts of fluid it is in fact not a healthy thing to do it is a something that will put you in the hospital. Number two educate your family or if you're the family watching the video today educate your mom or your grandma that eight cups this amount of fluid is all you can have in a day. It doesn't matter if it's water, coffee, or tea. It's all lumped in together as one fluid restriction of 2 ,000 milliliters or two liters for the entire day.

Thank you for watching Kelly, the nurse.