Radiotherapy is currently one of the important means of treating cancer. 70% of lung cancer patients require radiotherapy at different stages of the disease, including radiotherapy alone or in combination with chemotherapy etc.
Importance of nutritious diet for lung cancer patients
Radiotherapy patients often experience varying degrees of systemic reactions, digestive tract reactions, and bone marrow suppression reactions during treatment.
At this time, if radiotherapy can be combined with appropriate nutritional therapy, it can not only ensure the smooth progress of radiotherapy, but also improve the efficacy of radiotherapy and reduce the side effects of radiotherapy.
Therefore, nutritional therapy is an important measure to maintain the patient’s physical strength and anti-cancer ability.
Diet adjusts according to different symptoms.
For radiotherapy patients who can eat, food should be selected according to physical condition, nutritional status, weather, climate, living habits, etc.
According to traditional Chinese medicine, radiation is a kind of heat poison. During treatment, patients often experience symptoms such as dry mouth, sore throat, nausea, anorexia, dry nasopharynx, yellow urine and less urine.
Especially for malignant tumors of the head and neck, the reaction caused by radiotherapy is relatively severe, and it can also cause radioactive inflammation in the mouth, throat, esophagus, etc. Therefore, the diet should be adjusted according to different clinical symptoms.
Dietary choices for lung cancer patients
Due to the serious reaction of radiotherapy, many people have poor appetite, swallowing pain, and oral ulcers, so they should eat semi-liquid or soft food, such as nutritious and easily digestible porridge and soup noodles.
The food should not be too hot. Meat can be chopped into small pieces or stewed. If vegetables and fruits cannot be swallowed, they can be squeezed into juice and drunk. In addition, do not eat hot foods such as dog meat, mutton, yellow croaker, hairtail, crab, orange, longan, etc., and be careful not to eat spicy food.
If fever symptoms occur during radiotherapy, you can eat pears, watermelons, water chestnuts, turtles, duck eggs and duck meat to relieve symptoms.
the diet for lung cancer patients should contain high vitamins and high protein nutrition.
Eat more fruits and vegetables, supplement multiple vitamins, and drink more milk and yogurt.
In order to supplement the body’s protein needs, you should also drink more broth and fish soup, especially clear stewed turtle soup, which can nourish yin and blood and stimulate bone marrow hematopoiesis, which is very suitable for radiotherapy patients.
Radiotherapy patients should pay attention to high-protein diet. You can also choose some medicinal diets appropriately, such as stewed meat or stewed turtle soup, appropriately with raw astragalus, ganoderma lucidum, cordyceps sinensis, wolfberry and other Chinese medicines.
It is also good to drink more chrysanthemum tea, honeysuckle tea, etc. which can clear away heat and detoxify.