Jen the Dietician - Jan. 12, 2011

Jen is a young woman who knows a lot about cancer and diet. She knew about the special needs of cancer patients who get radiation treatment to the head. This is what we learned from her.

• During treatment don't take single dose antioxidants
  
  
• Do take a 1-a-day multivitamin
  
  
• Boost and Ensure supplements are good, as are the no name brand supplements
  
  
• Get as much protein and calories per gulp as possible
  
  
• During treatment when you can't eat you should drink 7 Ensures a day
  
  
• Pain medications will make you constipated so you need to take stool softeners
  
  
• Keeping yourself nourished is critical - you must stay strong throughout the treatments
  
  
• 2-3 servings of fish per week is good
  
  
• Add protein base to smoothies (e.g., whey powder)
  
  
• You can also add yogurt, tofu, soya milk and coconut milk to smoothies

The most important thing for us that she said was:

• The cancer prevention diet is VERY different from the cancer treatment diet

I researched on the Internet what to eat when you have cancer and there was a lot about no sugar, no red meat, no meat with hormones in it like chicken... The list of Do Not Eat was massive.

But none of this applies when you're about to get radiation or chemo. The most important thing is to keep up your body weight.

This was a relief as we had drastically changed our diet to try to accommodate the cancer diet. Now we could go back to eating "normally". It should be noted though that once treatment is over, the cancer prevention diet goes into full force so the cancer doesn't come back.