How Has Cancer Changed Your Relationship With Food?

Article

Cancer changes one’s life in ways both big and small. One, in particular, is how it changes one's relationship with food. So, CURE asked its audience how cancer changed their relationship with food and how they handle nutrition moving forward.

From changing the taste of certain foods to learning new things about nutrition, CURE® recently asked its social media audience: How has cancer changed your relationship with food? Here are some of their responses.

  • In remission 2 years from stage 3 anal cancer and my relationship to food has been completely re-imagined. Pelvic radiation has made it imperative I avoid food that can cause gastrointestinal distress. I eat little sugar; I can no longer eat hot peppers or spicy foods because I easily get mouth sores since chemo. — TP
  • It made me never take food for granted. During treatment food and beverages, even water, tasted nasty. Now I relish the flavors. - BG
  • I have stage 4 breast cancer. I haven’t changed my diet much, which has always been pretty well balanced. And I don’t fret about treating myself to “unhealthy” choices. I figure I deserve to enjoy a quality of life that makes me happy. - YS
  • Eating healthy meals now. Started changes prior to cancer, but really stepped it up. — MM
  • It changed my appetite! I’m not as hungry as I use(d) to be. Meat tastes funny to me sometimes. - SH
  • It hasn’t changed much since I’ve always eaten pretty healthfully. I have eliminated foods that I must avoid (no more raw bar/sushi, unpasteurized cheese, and the like as they are potentially dangerous for blood cancer). I want to enjoy life, and food is part of it. — KR
  • Definitely eating healthier, more organic foods (and) regular exercise. - JM
  • Absolutely! I do NOT eat the crap I used to. Candy, fast food, processed foods, food dye, etc. It’s a work in progress but each day I get better at picking better food choices and eliminating the stuff I can do without. It took some time, so don't be discouraged. - KK
  • I try to eat much healthier. Eliminating white flours, white rice, sugar and dairy has made it easier to tolerate the chemo side effects. - TC
  • I always ate healthy, got plenty of exercise, did physical work. Yet, the cancer came... and came back. I still eat very healthy (vegetarian, heading to vegan), but I treat myself whenever I feel like it! — TA
  • I just do liquid by mouth and canned nutrition by belly tube. - MH
  • I have tried to learn to use food as fuel, not comfort. I’m not doing great in the pandemic with that! — DC
  • I went from being mostly vegetarian to eating strictly a plant-based diet. - BOD
  • I haven't changed much of anything. All food tastes so different now. Mealtime for me is more like work. If there is one thing I could change, it would be one more pill to take to replace the food I try to eat. — RS
  • I completely changed my relationship with food. I used to eat and enjoy all food without digging deeper into the issue of what is the food doing to my body. I use food to nourish me now. I give it what it needs to feel good and healthy. It made me more aware of how unhealthy food makes you feel. — TS
  • My diet is extremely limited. I can no longer tolerate most veggies and red meat. I have to take supplements to augment my diet. Twelve years now and counting. - AM
  • Missing the "real" taste of food as I go through radiation treatment on my neck. Can't wait to get back to biting into a crisp juicy apple, snacking on raw carrots and fresh fruit on my morning granola. Right now, everything tastes like metal. - JB
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For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey. If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key. “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained. READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, an expert on CLL
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, and Josie Montegaard, MSN, AGPCNP-BC, experts on CLL
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