Rx for Hope by M. D. Chen

Author:M. D. Chen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Diet and Nutrition

Twenty-five years ago, if you asked an MD about nutrition, he or she would either have ignored you or brushed you off with comments like “Watch your weight,” or “Don’t eat too many burgers.” Some oncologists might have even said something to the effect of “Diet? We’re dealing with cancer here! Don’t worry about what you eat.” The joke back then was about the “expensive urine” of “health nuts,” and placebos, as if there was no science behind the contention that nutrition is vitally important to a patient’s healing and overall well-being.

Fortunately, things have changed, albeit all too subtly and not so extensively as might be desired. An intelligent, motivated layperson these days can easily find abundant information with scientific notion on diet and nutrition that can play an important if not pivotal role in preventing or treating cancer.

This is a good thing, especially for patients with cancer who are receiving repeated infusions of cytotoxic chemotherapy drugs. The impact of these treatments on a person’s immune system and other organs is obvious. If the body does not even have enough essential nutrients required for its normal function, how can it repair the damages and recover from the chemotherapy side effects or foster enough immune system power to fight back the cancer? For example, there are several studies over the years that many cancer patients have abnormally or even critically low vitamin C levels in their blood. However, these kinds of studies are routinely ignored by the oncology community. Some opinion leaders used the negative study results showing supplements with certain nutrients did not help with cancer prevention to conclude that nutritional supplements do not help with cancer prevention or treatment. They again fell into the trap of thinking that a single drug, in this case a vitamin, can make a difference in the outcome of a complex disease like cancer. Rather a comprehensive plan with balanced nutritional components is likely to be needed for benefiting cancer control. Looking at the success of our patients who are all on a list of complementing and balanced nutritional supplements, I have no doubt that nutritional supplements are needed and necessary for cancer patients’ recovery. The value cannot be disallowed by a few pharmaceutical style studies. In the future, a more useful way of studying this issue is to compare models of care with or without imparting a comprehensive nutritional and supplement plan in their treatment.

In the following section, we will discuss general nutritional guidelines as well as more specific recommendations on particular diet programs for cancer patients.

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