If you have just been diagnosed with dysphagia, you have to be ready to make changes to your everyday routine and the severity of these changes will largely depend on your level of dysphagia. It is still possible to enjoy your life and your meals if you have dysphagia, however. There are more alternatives available to dysphagic people than ever before, and if you are smart with your meals, you might find yourself forgetting that you even have dysphagia at times. Let’s take a look at a few tips you can follow to live a semi-normal life with dysphagia.
You Will Need to Get Familiar with Thickeners
Thickeners and thickened foods will become part of your everyday life so you will need to get used to them. It may feel strange to drink things like thickened water at the beginning, but you’ll eventually get used to it.
Everything starts with the right thickener. Some thickeners are more enjoyable than others and come in more formats and varieties. You can check out the complete line of SimplyThick Easy Mix thickeners here.
You should buy thickeners in different formats for different usages. You can get a big container for home, for instance, and buy small packets that you can place in your car or somewhere in your office. Packets will come in handy when you are traveling too.
Be Creative with Your Food Choices
If you want to make your diet enjoyable and feel normal, you will need to get creative. For instance, if you do not like the feel of thickened juices but you still want to stay hydrated, then you can always drink smoothies instead and adjust their consistency based on your needs.
Focus on What You Can Eat and Not What You Can’t
Know that you can still enjoy delicious foods and build a list of things and types of food you naturally like to eat. Then start making a list of recipes that you will be able to modify or eat virtually as is. BBQ foods for instance, can be very dysphagia friendly and there are tons of delicious BBQ recipes that require almost no modification to be enjoyed by a dysphagic, such as pulled pork, as one example.
If you are a big meat eater, then start looking at pureed versions of meat-based recipes or recipes with shredded or minced meat. Things like tuna salads, for instance, or anything with ground beef can be modified to have the perfect consistency for you. Many of these recipes will have some sort of sauce that accompanies them, so you can integrate the sauce into the puree to give it the perfect consistency without affecting the taste.
Follow our tips and you will have a much easier time dealing with dysphagia. If you need help and support, we suggest you speak with other people who suffer from the condition and ask them how they are able to cope with it. Their advice could prove invaluable.
