How Is Hydration Managed During Cancer Treatment?
Registered dietitian and oncology nutritionist Julie Lanford discusses general hydration needs, how needs may vary during cancer treatment, and tips for maintaining hydration levels.
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatfield:
Hydration is a crucial aspect of supporting your body during cancer treatment. But what should patients know? Can side effects like vomiting and diarrhea make you lose too much fluid? I’ve connected with a leading voice on this topic, and we will get some answers right now on this Patient Empowerment Network RESTORE program.
Julie, it may seem like a silly question, but how much water should patients be drinking each day while undergoing cancer treatment? And can too much or too little trigger side effects?
Julie Lanford:
Yeah, so we talk in general about water intake. And we often, the guideline is eight to 10 cups per day, which is somewhere between 64 and 80 ounces, if you do your math. And that’s the general good guide.
Now, if you have a treatment regimen, where the doctors are like, Make sure you hydrate really well for the next two days, somesome chemos are pretty toxic to the kidneys. And so they want you to take in lots and lots of extra water to kind of flush that out, then you would want to be doing 10 cups and maybe a little bit more. You know, technically people can consume too much water, it would take a lot, and it would take you consuming a lot at one time in order for you to cause a lot of problems.
The other sort of risk in terms of taking in too much water is if you’re not eating very well, and you’re not getting your electrolytes, and you’re just drinking plain water, sometimes that can cause a balance issue with the electrolytes in your blood. So if you are somebody who’s nauseated, having lots of diarrhea, and you’re just drinking water, I would suggest you have some type of oral rehydration beverage, you can make some yourself. But the easiest thing is something like Gatorade or Pedialyte, or even just diluting juice and adding a little bit of salt to it, something that helps get your body those electrolytes in addition to the water, because that’ll just help everything function better.
But let’s assume that you can eat okay, then generally eight to 10 cups of a beverage a day should meet your needs. You definitely can get too little water, that is always a challenge. And usually a sign of not enough water is when you get lightheaded standing up, or you have lost weight really quick, like, I don’t know, two pounds over a day, or five pounds over a day. That to me is a sign of fluid loss without being replaced, which can happen if you are having a lot of vomiting and diarrhea, which just pulls a lot of water out of your body.
And so those oral rehydration solutions, which have the electrolytes mixed in with the water really can help you from sort of getting overly dehydrated, because the last thing you want to have to do is go over to that hospital. But if you have lost fluids really, really fast, and you are nauseated, you can’t keep anything down, or you cannot stop the diarrhea, you will feel better if you go over there and get hydrated.
That’s what I always tell people, especially if it’s a Friday. Nobody wants to have to deal with the hospital, but you can feel pretty awful if you’re dehydrated, it’s very risky. So it can be challenging. But unlikely to get overhydrated, probably more likely to get dehydrated.
Lisa Hatfield:
Okay, thank you. Julie, are there specific hydration strategies or recommendations to follow? And how can patients address common hydration challenges and ensure they’re meeting their fluid needs effectively?
Julie Lanford:
Yeah, so I think the challenge often is that you don’t realize how much time has gone by since you’ve had something to drink. So a couple things, monitoring your weight, if this is a significant risk for you, you want to pay attention to if your weight is staying stable. And then the other thing is to go ahead and fill up a big jug.
So if it’s 64 ounces, or you want to do two jugs a day, and drinking from that, so you know how much you’re having, it is also perfectly fine to get your water from juice, from different beverages, even coffee and tea. I know some people like to say, well, if it has caffeine, it’s dehydrating you. It’s not really that much anyway.
And if that’s all that tastes good to you, it’s better off to get that. So I think spreading your beverages throughout the day. So setting a timer, have four ounces or eight ounces every hour or two, and allow yourself the freedom to choose whatever beverage you think will taste good to you.
If you’re tired of the sweet stuff, let’s say you’ve kind of existed on like Ensure and Gatorade for days, and you’re so sick of the sweet taste. Broths are something that can help hydrate you. Milk is a great option to give you nutrition and hydration. You can get lactose-free if you don’t tolerate lactose, but those also give you that water along with the nutrition. So those are kind of my basic guidelines for doing that. And then just making sure that you’re letting yourself have things that taste good to you so that you’re more motivated to get it down.
Lisa Hatfield:
Okay, thank you. You heard it here directly from the expert. Thanks for joining this RESTORE program. I’m your host, Lisa Hatfield.
