Diet taboos for lung cancer patients

Most of the unsafe foods that clearly contain carcinogens, foods that can trigger allergies, and foods that are clearly intolerable during the treatment phase, and other statements such as "cannot eat fats", "cannot touch cold foods" and "vegetarians must starve cancer cells", do not have enough evidence-based medical basis, so there is no need to blindly follow the trend of taboos.

This is not something I say out of thin air. In the past few years of patient follow-up in the thoracic surgery department, I have seen too many examples of people getting into trouble because of taboos. Last month, there was an uncle who had just undergone radical surgery for lung cancer. His postoperative recovery indicators were good. After he was discharged from the hospital, he heard from an old patient in the same community that "chicken is a fat food, and eating it will cause the tumor to relapse." After returning home, he didn't even dare to touch eggs. He drank millet porridge with boiled vegetables every day. When he checked again in less than two weeks, his albumin dropped by almost 10g/L.

Let’s start with the foods that are uncontroversial and should be avoided whether you believe in Chinese medicine or Western medicine – such as moldy peanuts and corn, leftovers that have been stored for several days, old fried oil that has been used dozens of times, and pickled products in processed meats that add a lot of nitrites. Aflatoxins and nitrosamines in things are clearly listed as carcinogens by the World Health Organization. Ordinary people have the risk of cancer if they eat them for a long time. Patients with lung cancer have weaker immune functions and poor metabolic abilities than ordinary people. Exposure to these is a burden on your body, so avoid it if you can.

There are also things that make you feel uncomfortable after eating them. For example, you get hives after eating shrimps since you were a child, or you get diarrhea after drinking iced drinks. No matter what others say about whether seafood is tonic or not, or whether iced drinks are refreshing or not, don’t touch them. Especially during radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the mucosa of the oral cavity and gastrointestinal tract is already damaged to varying degrees. If allergies and diarrhea occur again, it will affect the progress of treatment at least, and may lead to electrolyte imbalance in severe cases, which is not worth the gain. Oh, by the way, patients taking targeted drugs should pay extra attention. Grapefruit and grapefruit are two fruits that must be strictly avoided. The furanocoumarins contained in them will inhibit the CYP3A4 enzyme in the liver that metabolizes targeted drugs, causing the drug to accumulate in the body, which will either increase the risk of side effects or affect the efficacy of the drug. However, ordinary tangerines, oranges, and pomeloes are fine. You don’t have to abstain from all citrus. I have seen many patients get confused and dare not even eat citrus. It is completely unnecessary.

As for the most widely circulated saying, "you cannot eat fat food", it has always been the most controversial point. "Fat food" in the context of traditional Chinese medicine refers to foods that are easy to aggravate heat syndrome and induce old diseases. However, this judgment must be based on your physical constitution. For example, if you are currently in the stage of coughing up yellow phlegm due to lung heat, eating too many fried, spicy, lychee, and longan foods will cause heat. Sexual foods may indeed aggravate symptoms, but if you are deficient in qi and blood after surgery and have no strength to speak, then fish, shrimp, chicken, and eggs are all high-quality proteins. In traditional Chinese medicine, they are also good things for replenishing qi and blood, and they are not considered "fat foods" that need to be avoided at all. There is no concept of "fatting" in Western medicine. The core of all dietary guidance is to ensure balanced nutrition. In particular, cancer patients have about 30% higher protein requirements than ordinary people, so they should eat more of these high-protein foods. The current mainstream clinical view is actually the integration of traditional Chinese and Western medicine. It will not list dozens of taboos for you across the board. As long as you don't feel uncomfortable after eating and your indicators are normal, you can eat it.

I was particularly impressed by a 62-year-old aunt who received immunotherapy for advanced lung adenocarcinoma and the effect was particularly stable. She has loved eating hairy crabs all her life. When she was first diagnosed, her family was very strict and wouldn't even touch the crab legs. Later, when she came for a follow-up check-up, she specifically asked me if she could eat it because she was really greedy. I asked her to ask her attending doctor and the uric acid test was normal. She said she could eat whatever she wanted and not eat too much. It’s been almost 3 years now, and my aunt is always happy every time she comes for a follow-up check-up. She says that after autumn, she eats hairy crabs two or three times a month, and she is in better spirits than many of her peers who are not sick.

Another pitfall that many people fall into is that they believe that "eating less can starve cancer cells to death" and deliberately go on a diet or even become completely vegetarian. Don’t believe this. The metabolic capacity of cancer cells is much stronger than that of normal cells. If you eat less nutrients, cancer cells will still steal nutrients from normal cells. In the end, only your own immunity will be starved. When your immunity is down, cancer cells will spread more easily, and the gain will not be worth the loss. There was a patient with early-stage lung cancer. The pathological classification after surgery was particularly good. The cure rate was supposed to be over 90%. However, he insisted on believing in "vegetarian detoxification" and stopped all meat and eggs. In the end, malnutrition led to severe pneumonia. He stayed in the ICU for half a month. The review and follow-up that should have ended long ago took more than half a year.

In fact, after all, there are really not so many messy rules for the diet of lung cancer patients. The core ones are three: safety, nutrition, and comfort. There is no need to search around for "20 foods that lung cancer patients must avoid" or listen to the list of taboos casually mentioned by relatives and neighbors. If you are really not sure whether you can eat them, ask your attending doctor during your next review, or ask a nutritionist to tailor a recipe for you. It is more reliable than anything else. Oh, by the way, if you particularly want to eat something one day, as long as it is not one of the three strictly taboos mentioned above, it doesn't matter if you skip two bites. A good mood can sometimes help your condition more than ten pounds of supplements.