Why feeding is an integral part of cancer treatment

I have been reading good news for increased cancer awareness in our East African societies. The majority of us are aware that cancer treatment calls for an aggressive approach both in terms of methodology and medications. A lot of work is done during diagnosis time and a lot of work is required during treatment. This is why it calls more concerted efforts than any other disease both in terms of expertise and medications. Good or effective chemotherapy drugs are very expensive. There are pills or dosages worth $100,000 that requires to be taken three or four times a year. However to avoid such big costs, the disease needs early detection for better management with less costs. For this note, I encourage all African countries with focus on fight against cancer disease to promote and encourage screening because majority of cancerous diseases are asymptomatic at an early stage. I have had contradictory discussions with some authorities over possible research work but just to remind every one that clinical cancer research work helps to expose and measure the rate of occurrence for a particular disease in the society. It is,, therefore, difficult to start screening people from the sky or using old cancer registries to assess the disease situation in a given population. Back to my point of interest, cancer disease requires a combination of nutrition and medical treatment in order to achieve a good performance status or clinical status. One of the most tangible explanations is that chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment are always strong medications that kill or inhibit action of cancer cells. By killing cancer cells as seen in most of radiation treatment, some of the healthy or normal cells get damaged or destroyed. Nutrition supplement will always help the damaged healthy cells to regenerate. The body needs these healthy cells so that you can maintain strength throughout the treatment course and enhance life effectiveness. Healthy foods will also provide you with the nutrients you need to fight opportunistic disease or infection that can a rise either as a complication of the disease or the drug. It is always advisable to eat foods that are high in protein to provide strength and help the body re-construct tissues that have been damaged by treatment. High protein meals include fish, chicken, lean beef, turkey and eggs. But for drugs, there are chemotherapy protocols and drugs are designed to be administered concurrently with chemotherapy or administered sub-sequentially to overcome drug related side effects. Again caution should be directed towards the particular type of cancer suffered by the patient. For example, you do not expect a patient with colon or liver cancer to feed in the same manner like one with lung, brain or breast cancer. In general we tend to consider foods high in protein and calories as very essential to provide energy. Many of the latest clinical trials show that patients who feed well respond positively to medications and usually have good response rates with better tolerance to side effects. Regeneration is an important factor to consider when it comes to cancer management. Many of us have seen that patients under cancer treatment tend to appear weak due to treatment exhaustion from either numerous surgeries done during disease investigation, radiation, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy. It is, therefore, important that a patient maintain energy and healthy immune system to fight against the disease. We actually envisage that the diet of a cancer patient is stringently more nutritious than that of a healthy looking person. One of the obstacles encountered during feeding for cancer patients is that they tend to experience loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting or sore mouth that could result from drug related effects or immune deficiency of the patient. It is advisable to drink enough fluids to compensate for lost body fluids either through vomits or even surgery. Fluid loss in cancer patients is commonly encountered through vomiting and diarrhea that are one of the common side effects for chemotherapy. Dr Joseph Kamugisha is a resident oncologist in Jerusalem, Israel