Changes to Diet After a Breast Cancer Diagnosis
- Pink Project
- Feb 13, 2022
- 3 min read
The Pink Project
Breast Cancer can change a lot when it comes to food - your taste, your diet, even your preferences. Keep reading to explore more about changes to your diet and food habits through your breast cancer journey.
Photo: Media from Wix
Topics
Impact of a Healthy Diet on a Breast Cancer Diagnosis
A healthy diet is important to all aspects of life and living, but can be difficult after a breast cancer diagnosis. Your body is changing to adapt to treatments, stressors, and other external factors around you, and this also applies to your post-surgical appetite, as well. This can be difficult to upkeep considering your body has gone through so much, and it is okay.
Do not feel bad if you cannot always maintain a steady, healthy diet. This is very important when it comes to coping with symptoms, aggressive treatments, and with emotional hardships.
Diet After Chemotherapy
There are many forms of breast cancer treatments, like chemotherapy. Surgery is a stressful event for the body that requires a lot of energy, as mentioned before, dedicated to healing and preventing infection or rejection (with adjuvant medication of course!). Some side effects like nausea, taste changes, early satiety (satisfaction), slow gastric emptying, etc. (Marinho et al., 2017) can contribute to the difficulty of keeping up a healthy diet. As every individual’s experience varies, it is very difficult to determine as to how one’s body may react to chemotherapy. For instance, it cause one’s appetite to decrease, for others, it can cause an increase.
Study Spotlight
Impact of Chemotherapy on Perceptions Related to Food Intake in Women with Breast Cancer: A Prospective Study (Marinho et al., 2017)
Chemotherapy has the power to alter one’s perceptions surrounding food intake and diet. A study performed by Marinho et al. (2017) found that chemotherapy alters food hedonism (eating for pleasure) by increasing overall appetite and building an appetite for salty and spicy foods. This study also found that chemotherapy has a negative impact on meal enjoyment and causes various side effects like taste changes and nausea (Marinho et al., 2017).
This study also found that the choice of food and what is consumed is heavily reliant on a “complex interaction between intra- and interpersonal factors.” But, what does this mean?
One’s diet depends on many self and surrounding factors. The determinants of food choices can be grouped based on the following factors:
Biological: Hunger, taste, and appetite
Economic: Cost, income, and availability
Physical: Access, education, cooking facilities, and time
Social: Culture, family, peers, and meal patterns
Psychological: Disposition, stress, and blame
This study observed that within the general population, taste is considered as a very important factor when it comes to food choice decisions, alongside cost, convenience, health, and variety.
Dietary Practices After Treatment
After treatment, individuals can follow advice that can reduce their risk of cancer coming back, as stated by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF, 2022). This includes eating a healthy diet that is high in fibre and low in saturated fats, limiting alcohol and engaging in physical activity (Breast Cancer Now, 2020).
Breast Cancer Now put together a simple list of foods you can include in your diet that is both healthy and may reduce the risk of breast cancer recurrence. Still more research is needed.
But, this is highly dependent on many social determinants, as well as your own dietary restrictions and preferences. Referring back to the study done by Marinho et al. (2017), there are many barriers one may face in order to keep up a healthy diet and lifestyle, which includes physical and economic barriers.
Bringing us to our last point, you should not feel bad about not being able to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. There are many factors that impact this and we highly advise you to get in contact with your health care team, such as your primary care physician/nurse practitioner, oncology specialist, or nutritionist.
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References
Alternative Diets. (2020, January 2). Breast Cancer Now. https://breastcancernow.org/information-support/facing-breast-cancer/living-beyond-breast-cancer/your-body/diet-lifestyle-breast-cancer-recurrence
Healthy eating after breast cancer treatment. (2020, January 2). Breast Cancer Now. https://breastcancernow.org/information-support/facing-breast-cancer/living-beyond-breast-cancer/your-body/healthy-eating-after-treatment-breast-cancer
Kiew, S. J., Majid, H. A., & Mohd Taib, N. A. (2021). A qualitative exploration: Dietary behaviour of Malaysian breast cancer survivors. European Journal of Cancer Care, 31(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/ecc.13530
Marinho, E. D. C., Custódio, I. D. D., Ferreira, I. B., Crispim, C. A., Paiva, C. E., & Maia, Y. C. D. P. (2017). Impact of chemotherapy on perceptions related to food intake in women with breast cancer: A prospective study. PLOS ONE, 12(11), e0187573. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187573
World Cancer Research Fund. (2022, January 17). More people are surviving cancer than ever before. https://www.wcrf-uk.org/preventing-cancer/our-cancer-prevention-recommendations/after-cancer-diagnosis/
Your diet during treatment for breast cancer. (2021, February 1). Breast Cancer Now. https://breastcancernow.org/information-support/facing-breast-cancer/living-beyond-breast-cancer/your-body/diet-during-breast-cancer-treatment#Will%20chemotherapy%20affect%20my%20diet
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