How Does Nutritional Screening and Assessment Impact Cancer Care?
What impact can nutritional screening have on cancer care? Expert Dr. Jennifer Ligibel from Harvard Medical School discusses key pieces of the nutrition puzzle for cancer patients and advice for boosting calorie intake and nutrition during the cancer journey.
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatfield:
How can nutrition help during the cancer journey? So many questions, and fortunately I’ve connected with a respected Harvard expert to get some answers on this Patient Empowerment Network RESTORE program.
Dr. Ligibel, what are the key components of nutrition that patients should be thinking of during their cancer treatment?
Dr. Jennifer Ligibel:
This is such a good question and honestly, something I get asked every day that I’m in clinic, “What should I eat?” I think it’s such an important part of our health more broadly. What we eat is related to our weight. It’s related to often, our mood. It has such an impact on so many elements of our lives. And for a cancer patient, there is I think a really complicated relationship often with food for people as they’re going through treatment, things that they once really loved to eat are no longer palatable.
Sometimes people also really feel worried about will what I eat make my cancer worse or make it come back? And I think there’s a lot of myths out there about the relationship between food and cancer. We do know that, historically, if you look across large groups of people, that people who eat healthier diets have a lower risk of developing many kinds of cancer.
But I think what’s confusing sometimes is what healthy is. Sometimes changes, and you only have to look back in history to see, there was a time when we thought all fat was bad, and low fat products were the way that everybody should be eating. And then people realized, “Oh wait, if we take all the fat out, that means we added a lot of sugar.” And so I think that there can be a lot of confusion about diet at times.
One of the things that we do know though, that eating whole foods, so things that come from a plant or from an animal that are not ultra-processed generally tend to be healthier for people. Balanced diets are really important, although there’s a lot of interest in sort of these extreme diets where you cut out all the fat or all the carbs really for long-term health. Most studies suggest a balanced diet is more healthful, that really relies on fruits and vegetables and lean meats and more complicated grains.
So these are kind of really healthful eating patterns more broadly. But what about for somebody with cancer? And the reality is that we don’t have perfect evidence about what the best diet for someone to be eating is. And that can be really frustrating, because I know people often want to be told, “What you need to do is eat a lot of broccoli, or as long as you never have X food again, you’re going to be fine”.
Unfortunately, the research that we have doesn’t give us such clear-cut guidance about what the best diet is or if there are foods that people should avoid at all costs or something that you should eat every day. We do know as well that there are kinds of different dietary considerations for different phases of the cancer journey as well. One thing that is important when you’re getting treatment, especially chemotherapy treatment, is to make sure that you have enough protein in your diet. We know that people tend to lose muscle mass during chemotherapy treatment, and not having adequate protein is one of the factors that contributes to that, as well as not exercising as much.
We know that after cancer treatment, making sure that your diet is balanced, that it keeps your weight in a good range, is really important. But there’s a lot that we don’t know about diet, and I think this is something that’s really important to acknowledge and to study. But I think it also means that people shouldn’t beat themselves up if they’re not able to adhere to a very strict or a particular dietary plan. There’s a lot we need to still learn about food. But I think that people can really be aware that trying to eat a healthy balanced diet is something that is a long-term goal and not something that if you have one bad day that it’s going to have an impact on you or your cancer.
Lisa Hatfield:
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I know we hear a lot as cancer patients, there’s a lot of information thrown at us to not eat sugar, cut out all sugar, sugar feeds cancer. I know that we could have a two-hour-long discussion, at least, about that. But it’s nice to hear that we don’t need to beat it, if we have one little piece of dark chocolate, because it just feels good after our chemo, that’s probably okay. If we want to do that. So that’s nice to hear. So thank you.
Dr. Jennifer Ligibel:
Absolutely.
Lisa Hatfield:
You heard it here directly from the expert. Thanks for joining this RESTORE program. I’m your host, Lisa Hatfield.
