Food for Thought – Diet

Until I contracted cancer, I gave little thought to what I eat.  However, I soon learned the importance of a proper diet.  The cancer diet protocol calls for the elimination of red meat and choosing foods high in antioxidants, various vitamins and alkalising foods that oxygenate the body.  Based on wheat germ, it is very much like rabbit food.

The best I have been able to do is modify my existing diet through the elimination or addition of a better food source.

Those of us with advanced PCa are not concentrating on diet.  Coping with the side effects of aggressive treatments, we are not even concentrating on food.  I have run the gamut of diet from nausea, vomiting, through changing of taste sensations.

Just struggling to exist, I let my diet and eating habits go and started losing too much weight … and that had to stop.  Palliative Care sent a dietician around to help me and she put me on a high protein high energy diet.

She advised taking four or five snacks throughout the day rather than the traditional three meals a day.  It was the inverse of a weight reduction diet.  Whatever I have, she advised that I add more nutrients any way it was possible.  If I have ice cream, add some fruit or topping.  If I have eggs on toast, add some bacon.  Replace a glass of water with cordial or beer.  You can see how it works.  in other words, go for everything that weight loss diets prohibit.

At the moment, I am using Dexmethasone to help promote eating.  I don’t really have an appetite.  if there is food in front of me, I will eat it but if not I will go without.

After nearly dying back in March and being on antibiotics for a couple of months, I had to get into the probiotics to rebuild my gut flora/good bacteria.  Once never to be seen in our house, yoghurt has become part of my basic diet.

Inevitably, that led to the need to boost my immune system to allow my body to fight back.

The next few posts will show how I dealt with these issues.

Related articles

• High Protein Diet Plans (nutraplanet.com)
• High Protein Foods List (answers.com)
• High Protein Vegetarian Diet Includes these 5 Food Sources (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)