Dietary considerations for patients with colon cancer

The misunderstanding in the dietary conditioning of colon cancer is that on the one hand, the amount of food intake should be strictly controlled in order to "starve" cancer cells. Those who hold this view believe that cancer cells have a much stronger ability to absorb nutrients than normal cells. If the patient eats a lot and has good nutrition, the cancer cells will be cured first. Therefore, it is wrong not to actively strengthen nutrition. It is precisely because cancer cells proliferate quickly that they rapidly consume the body's nutrients, leading to malnutrition, decreased anti-cancer ability, and further development and spread of cancer cells. The other side believes that cancer is a "rich disease" and that you have to eat a lot of supplements. Although cancer patients need nutrition, because cancer seriously damages the functions of various organs in the process of eroding the human body, the patient's sense of taste is reduced, appetite is decreased, and digestive function is very poor, resulting in loss of appetite and metabolic disorders in nutrient absorption. At this time, if the patient is blindly fed with tortoises, soft-shelled turtles, sea cucumbers and other difficult-to-digest tonic foods, not only will they not be digested and absorbed, but they will also aggravate the gastrointestinal digestion and absorption function, further aggravating the disease.

Patients with colon cancer should pay proper attention to eating more light and easily digestible foods, and less greasy, fatty and fried foods. They should treat the issue flexibly according to their own specific circumstances. Over-emphasizing dietary taboos is not conducive to nutritional support.

Traditional Chinese medicine advocates appropriate dietary restrictions, while Western medicine generally does not advocate dietary restrictions. Western medicine attaches importance to diet and relationships, and is not opposed to dietary restrictions. For example, food contaminated with aflatoxin cannot be eaten; burnt food is easy to cause protein denaturation, pyrolysis and thermal polymerization, and is easy to produce polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are harmful to the human body, so it is not recommended to eat it. Smoked fish and smoked meat are also not recommended to be eaten too much. Alcohol can reduce the body's detoxification function and biotransformation function, reduce immunity, increase the activity of carcinogens in the body, and has cytotoxicity, so it should not be consumed. Some foods cannot be eaten during medication, such as shrimps should not be eaten when taking vitamin C, because vitamin C can reduce pentavalent arsenic in shrimp meat to arsenic trioxide, which is very toxic to the human body. Traditional Chinese medicine does not blindly and indiscriminately restrict food, but rather appropriately restricts food based on syndrome differentiation. It is generally believed that in the early and middle stages of cancer, the body fluids are damaged and the yin is robbed, which is mostly due to yin deficiency and internal heat. Therefore, in terms of diet, foods with pungent, warm, dry and hot properties should be avoided, and greasy foods are also recommended to be eaten less; in the middle and late stages of cancer, most of them are deficiency syndromes and cold syndromes, and foods such as warming and nourishing the spleen and stomach, replenishing qi and generating blood are recommended in terms of diet, while foods with cold properties should be eaten less or not. "Purpose: Avoiding food will lead to malnutrition and affect recovery from the disease.

The main purpose of dietary conditioning during chemotherapy is to increase appetite, reduce vomiting, help restore hematopoietic function, and improve liver and kidney function. Increase appetite and reduce vomiting: People with spleen and stomach deficiency can choose to eat ginger, jujube, mustard, pepper, coriander, wild rice stem, onion, Chinese cabbage, pigeon, mutton, etc.; people with spleen deficiency and heat can choose to eat winter melon, white melon, white lentils, red beans, mung beans, wolfberry, celery, amaranth, lotus seeds, etc. To restore hematopoietic function, you can choose to eat milk, eggs, pork liver, black chicken, placenta, red dates, black fungus, walnuts, black sesame, sea cucumber, shark, etc. To improve liver and kidney function, you can choose foods that clear and soften the liver, such as milk, carrots, lotus seeds, coix seeds, yam, hawthorn, bitter melon, winter melon, bananas, watermelons, pomegranates, etc.