Recently diagnosed with cancer, preparing for treatment or the end of treatment?
Perhaps you made a personal commitment to improve your overall nutritional health. Bernadette Festa, Nutrition Coordinator with Alta Bates Comprehensive Cancer Center in Berkeley, California is here to guide you along the path to nutritional well-being and now answers the most common questions posed by patients.

What does a nutritionist review with patients before treatment begins?

A nutritionist looks at what overall treatment the person is going through, studies the potential for symptoms and determines what we can do to be proactive right now towards lessening their symptoms both short and long-term. Also, how to maximize treatment outcome as nutrition and foods profoundly affect the body.

What diet should patients follow while taking treatment?

First I want to see patients go through one treatment cycle and see if they have any symptoms such as nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. If they are doing really well and have a minimal amount of symptoms then I will add more plant base products.

Also, oncology patients need foods and nutrients to help keep their red and white blood cell counts up during the treatment process. We want to make sure they have all those nutrients because some people don't absorb as efficiently when they're going through treatment.

We're now seeing that following an eating plan when you're going through cancer treatment may enhance your treatment results as studies show that nutrition has a role in 'blocking' promotion and progression of the cancer process on a cellular level.

Should patients add supplements during treatment?

There are certainly a lot of questions on what supplements to take when going through treatment. I find that patients come in with their designer bag full of supplements and are wondering what to take because they often get external advice from well-meaning friends, family or patients seated next to them in the treatment room.

To answer these questions, I like to assess what type of treatment a patient is undergoing because there are certain antioxidants that, per our available research, do not go well with certain kinds of chemotherapy. There's some potential for interaction or lessening the effectiveness of chemo based on what we know today.

We can't distill all the benefits of a plant or a food into a tiny pill, however as an example, one can include vegetable juices daily, or a supplement with these nutrients in them if they are unable to tolerate vegetable intake during treatment.

After treatment, what should a person eat to reduce the risk of a reoccurrence?

I introduce greater plant-based diet with more vegetables and legumes. It is important to go slowly for the best tolerance to make sure the body has healed and could handle these great foods. After which time, I recommend the following:

• Increasing the cruciferous and dark green leafy vegetable intake (broccoli, kale, chard, spinach, cauliflower and the cabbage group) to five or more servings a day
• Incorporating protective nutrients and macronutrients - to be determined based on specific cancer.
• Adding more anti-inflammatory type foods such as the Omega-3-fatty acids.
• Choosing healthier type of meats, those that use less hormones and steroids in the production process; reduce your meat sizes overall.
• Replacing fast food consumption with a slow food movement cuisine
• Adopting the 85/15 percent rule. Eat well 85% of the time. Keep your sugars low, and avoid foods producing spikes of blood sugar so that you lower the risk of producing more insulin possibly fueling the growth of cancer cells.
• Make nutritional eating a family affair. If I can get someone on a better eating program, it always trickles down to the family. We're seeing a lot of younger patients, especially with the breast cancer, so there is an urgent need to influence children's eating habits early in life.

What else can you do?

Nutrition, along with stress reduction techniques and exercise greatly improve your quality of life and how you feel. It's important to start healthy habits. It will become so second nature and ingrained that after awhile you don't have to work on it. You'll feel so good about yourself that you don't want to return to your old way of eating or living."

Bernadette Festa may be reached at (510) 204-5916 for information on nutrition or for details of her upcoming nutritional eating guide for cancer patients entitled: The Survivorship Diet.

Be sure to read Part II of Your Road to Well-Being.