It is not often that Medscape.com has a series of articles focused on the nuances of nutrition and cancer during treatments. Here are two articles that will be informative as a good overview of the complexities of the topic.
Foods to Fight Cancer
Extreme Nutrition: Can it beat cancer?
These articles will not answer every question you might have, but they will certainly help get you moving on the path to help yourself, and that just might be the path of asking for a referral to the Registered Dietitian (RD) at your cancer treatment facility, and particularly asking if your center has been forward-thinking enough to provide true comprehensive cancer care by hiring an RD (and better yet hiring an RD who is also a CSO - Certified Oncology Specialist).
These articles clearly point out that "cancer is not cancer is not cancer". Just as your tumor has been analyzed for its individual characteristics, your conventional cancer treatment plan has been individualized for you. So why have your nutritional status and your nutrition care plan not been individualized for you?
Do not pay attention to the comments after the articles asking for more specific and individualized advice in the articles (I admit that I both grimaced and laughed at the comment asking for just that from a psychologist). These two articles are written well, tapping the extensive wisdom of two highly-regarded sources, Suzanne Dixon, MPH, MS, RD and Rebecca Katz, author of The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen. You will certainly learn something from either of their words of experience, advice, and deeply-held compassion for people who have had a cancer diagnosis.
As we enter Thanksgiving Week, I am thankful that some cancer centers have stepped up to the plate by including RDs on their multi-disciplinary team of support and care for their patients. Certainly it is a better picture in 2013 than it was in 1984 with my first breast cancer diagnosis and again in 1995 with my second breast cancer diagnosis.
I am also thankful for my readers and hope you all have a bountiful Thanksgiving Day, surrounded by delicious food plus family and friends who give you the support and love you need to enjoy the day and life in general.
Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row,
Diana Dyer, MS, RD
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