In the past, people did not pay enough attention to the nutritional status of cancer patients, thinking that weight loss and weight loss might be a common thing. As the concept of cancer treatment continues to deepen, nutritional therapy is receiving more and more attention!
Malnutrition has a very serious impact on cancer patients. On the one hand, malnutrition will lower the patient's immunity and encourage the arrogance of cancer cells. On the other hand, during the treatment process, patients have already experienced varying degrees of side effects, and malnutrition will only make matters worse, causing a series of complications. Moreover, treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy are based on a certain basis and have certain requirements on the patient's overall physical fitness. If the patient is severely malnourished, he may even lose the chance of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. At the same time, malnourished cancer patients are more likely to suffer from impaired cognitive function, fatigue, pain, anxiety, etc., resulting in poor physical and mental health quality of life.
However, when cancer patients take nutritional supplements, due to lack of scientific theoretical knowledge and experience, they are often blind and prone to fall into some misunderstandings.
Some cancer patients believe that eating meat will aggravate their condition and affect wound healing and physical recovery speed, so they choose to be vegetarian. In fact, for cancer patients who are already weak and may be malnourished, eating only a vegetarian diet will lead to insufficient intake of calories and protein, making the already weak body even weaker, lowering the body's immunity, affecting recovery, and possibly increasing the risk of cancer recurrence.
Some cancer patients believe that the better they eat, the more nutrients their cancer cells will absorb and the faster they will grow. Therefore, they deliberately restrict their diet in an attempt to slow down the growth of cancer cells. However, insufficient nutrition not only fails to slow down cell reproduction, but can lead to metabolic disorders, inability to maintain skeletal muscle quality and physical fitness, affecting treatment effects and reducing quality of life.
Some patients also believe that not eating can starve cancer cells to death. Cancer cells cannot starve to death. They not only compete with normal cells for nutrients, but can also secrete vascular endothelial growth factor and angiopoietin, allowing these substances to reach existing blood vessels through the circulatory system, stimulating the abnormal growth of blood vessels, thereby achieving the purpose of transporting nutrients. Not eating will only affect the growth of normal cells in the body, further reduce the body's immunity and increase the risk of infection.
Some cancer patients also take supplements indiscriminately. Although cancer patients do need to take supplements, excessive supplementation with some foods and medicinal materials can actually be more harmful to the body. Because each patient’s physical condition is different, when selecting the properties of food and the medicinal properties of medicinal materials, it is also necessary to provide targeted supplements based on the actual situation of the patient. In fact, a safer way to replenish your body is to eat a balanced diet and ensure that you consume some fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk and other protein-rich foods every day.
The dietary maintenance of cancer patients should be based on syndrome differentiation and disease differentiation, and treatment should be tailored to the person, time and place, and reasonable supplements should be taken. You can use dietary supplements to enhance your resistance based on syndrome differentiation. Phlegm-dampness constitution: Thick tongue coating and white tongue coating are phlegm-damp constitution. You can choose to invigorate the spleen, resolve phlegm and remove dampness, and eat barley white lentils as appropriate. Damp-heat constitution: Yellow tongue coating is a damp-heat constitution, so you can eat some cooler foods, such as bitter melon, celery, mung beans, adzuki beans, etc. Yang deficiency constitution : If your tongue is fat and big, and you are usually afraid of cold, your body may be Yang deficiency , you can supplement longan meat, wolfberry, red dates, etc.; yin deficiency constitution: if there is no tongue coating , it means that the body is yin deficiency. You can supplement American ginseng, dendrobium, lily, Polygonatum , Adenophora , etc.
Protein, fat, carbohydrates are all nutrients that our human body needs to consume. However, if you consume too much protein and fat, it will increase the burden on the organs of the digestive system such as the liver and pancreas. Just like what traditional Chinese medicine often says: "deficiency cannot be replenished", frail cancer patients cannot achieve the tonic effect if they take particularly nourishing food and medicine.In life, you can eat some low-fat, high-quality protein foods such as carp and fungus , and then consume sufficient high-carbohydrate foods, such as potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, taro, etc., to ensure adequate calorie supplementation. However, patients with gynecological tumors should remember not to eat foods containing phytoestrogens, such as honey and soy products, to avoid an increase in estrogen and aggravation of the condition.
Everyone should remember to eat foods containing potassium and calcium. Why emphasize this point? This is because cold weather will affect the human body's urinary system, so when the weather is cold, people will run to the toilet more frequently. However, as urination increases, the body's sodium, potassium, calcium and other inorganic salts are also excreted. Cancer patients, especially those with advanced cancer, eat less food and suffer from nutritional deficiencies. Also, during the period of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, multi-drug chemotherapy, such as the application of diuretics and other drugs, or the patient's frequent vomiting, will cause the body's water and electrolyte balance to become imbalanced, and it is very easy to develop hyponatremia , hypokalemia , etc. Sodium can be obtained from table salt, while potassium and calcium can be obtained from many foods. For example, foods high in potassium include citrus, kiwi, lean pork, red dates, etc. Foods high in calcium include milk, Chinese cabbage, etc.
Supplementing is a step-by-step matter. Don't do it too hastily, otherwise things will turn to the extreme and it will definitely cause harm to the body. What's more important is that you must truly apply the tonic method to your daily life and persist in it day by day, so that your body's health will get better and better.
Cancer patients have Yin and Yang imbalances, and there are still "evil toxins" in the body. Simple dietary supplements are often not enough. It is best to supplement with traditional Chinese medicine syndrome differentiation and conditioning, so as to combine medicine and food and take a two-pronged approach. Traditional Chinese medicine can be used throughout the entire treatment process of cancer patients, but how to take traditional Chinese medicine depends on the different conditions of different individuals. In the process of cancer patients receiving treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the patient's white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets will decrease. Traditional Chinese medicine, through the four diagnosis and combination of ginseng and syndrome differentiation and treatment, can nourish qi and blood, nourish the kidneys and generate marrow, and achieve the purpose of increasing white blood cells and platelets by stimulating bone marrow hematopoiesis.
The advantage of traditional Chinese medicine treatment is that it can treat local tumors without damaging the body, and can also improve the anti-tumor function of the whole body, thereby inhibiting the growth of cancer cells locally. For example, Chinese medicines that nourish the heart, soothe the nerves, and soothe the liver can improve the patient's mental state, improve sleep, and reduce the occurrence of depression. Chinese medicines that activate blood circulation, unblock collaterals, and promote qi have analgesic effects. It has the effect of regenerating hair; Chinese medicines that replenish qi and strengthen the spleen, such as Codonopsis pilosula, Atractylodes, yam, etc., can increase appetite and relieve symptoms of gastrointestinal tract; Chinese medicines that replenish qi and blood, such as ginseng, angelica root, astragalus, have the functions of protecting bone marrow and improving blood cells. Through these symptomatic treatments, cancer symptoms can be alleviated and quality of life improved.
