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Getting sufficient nutrition during your
battle with cancer can be a serious challenge but one which must be
faced. If you don’t get enough protein and nutrients, your body
can’t heal properly and you risk losing muscle mass.
Malnutrition and the resulting loss of lean body mass in cancer
patients is common and is referred to as cancer cachexia. A
nutritionally compromised patient is less able to withstand the physical
rigors of some cancer treatments and insufficient dietary protein
hinders the body’s ability to heal itself after surgery.
Malnutrition can be caused by many factors,
including lack of appetite, nausea, fatigue and pain.
Mouth sores resulting from chemotherapy or radiation treatment
will make eating painful and difficult. Treatments often affect the
sense of taste and smell. Mouth dryness from decreased saliva production
can occur with radiation treatments to the head and neck, making it
difficult to chew or swallow. You
may just not feel like eating. And
to make matters worse, some cancers produce chemicals that increase the
body’s metabolism thus further draining the body of calories and
protein that aren’t being replaced.
While limited weight loss in cancer patients
is considered acceptable, with more pronounced weight loss you should
seek your physician’s assistance. If you lose more than 4-5% of your
weight in more than one month, you should talk to your doctor about
seeing a nutritionist or dietician.
Complicating this whole subject is the fear
expressed by some doctors, that high-protein supplements only end up
feeding the tumor. While some mouse studies have suggested this is a
legitimate concern, human studies are less conclusive.
It may all boil down to a risk/benefit analysis by you and your
doctor. What is
demonstrated however is that a malnourished patient heals more slowly
after surgery.
What
you can do to stay nutritionally healthy:
-
Eat
small, frequent meals.
-
Eat
calorie dense food such as shakes, cream soups, puddings, cereals,
cheese, fish, chicken and commercial protein supplements. Some
protein supplements may be easier to digest than others.
-
Have
ready-to-eat snacks readily available.
-
Avoid
filling and gas-forming foods such as raw cauliflower, broccoli,
onions, and green peppers.
-
Avoid
liquids with meals. Liquids tend to move food through and out of the
stomach more quickly. By
reducing liquids during meals, the food you eat will spend more time
in stomach being broken down, making it easier for the intestines to
absorb.
-
Eat
slowly
Stomach
Tube
If you cannot take nutrition orally, your
doctor may suggest feeding through a stomach tube.
This procedure is referred to as a G-tube insertion or PEG tube
insertion. The tube may be
inserted into the stomach, either by endoscopy (through the mouth and
esophagus with local anesthetic or intravenous sedation) or through the
skin surgically under general anesthesia if you have an obstruction.
If
a feeding tube is recommended ask these questions of your medical team:
- How
do I care for the skin around the tube?
- What
are the signs to look for and symptoms of infection?
- What
do I do if the tube is pulled out?
- What
are the signs to look for and symptoms of tube blockage?
- How
do I empty (decompress) the stomach through the tube? When and why
would I want to do that?
- What
do I put in the tube and how do I do that?
- Can
I make the tube less noticeable through clothing? How do I do that?
- What
normal activities can I continue to do? What do I need to stop
doing?
In
certain situations, intravenous feeding may be recommended.
Consult with your physician regarding specific information in
this case.
This page was last
edited on 06/19/2003
Written
by Rachael Myers Lowe, cancerpage.com
Reviewed by Sara Parkerson, RN, MSN, OCN, and Maureen Wilkie, RN,
CCM
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