衛教單張

Symptom

Diet principle and improving Method

Constipation

1. Attributions to constipation include taking painkillers, and anticancer drugs, long time bed-ridden, reduced exercise, and stressful emotions. Proper exercise and fixed defecation habit help ease the problem.
2. Drink at least 1500~2000 c.c. of water a day. It helps you with constipation if you drink a glass of warm water, lemon juice, prune juice, or high-fiber veggie-fruit drink with an empty stomach.
3. Ask your doctor for prescription that helps solve your problem if constipation persists.

Anemia and Insufficient Vitamins

Use of chemical anticancer drug often incurs vomiting, diarrhea, poor appetite, and poor absorption caused by lack of vitamin and mineral. Ask your doctor or dietitian for supplements if necessary.

Abdominal distension

1. Avoid coarse food, fiber rich food, and hard to digest food like beans, onion, sweet potato, milk with lactose, and soda.
2. Don't drink too much soup and beverage during normal meals; drink it half an hour prior to the meal.

Changes of the taste and smell senses

1. Chemo and radioactive therapy often reduces patients’ sweet and sour taste; use lemon and vinegar to strengthen their taste for sweetness. Avoid food like leaf mustard with strong bitter flavor.
2. Season meat to change the taste of it in order to prevent bitter taste caused by the intake of meat or protein rich food.

Oral cavity or routed throat or Swallow difficulty

1. Choose tender and shredded food or meat like porridge, noodles, fruit juice, bean curd, fresh fish, steaming eggs, soft melons, and leafy vegetables. Mix food with soup to ease swallow difficulty.
2. Avoid stimulating food like alcoholic drinks, soda, over sour lemon or orange juice, strongly flavored with pepper and chili powder, and over-heated or coarse food.
3. Make use of straw for liquid food or liquid supplement.
4. To reduce the painful feeling triggered by food intake, ask your doctor if it is all right to use anaesthetizing mouthwash before eating.
5. When suffering from severe condition, patients could be fed via nasogastric tube for nutritional supplement.

Diarrhea

1. There are a lot of reasons causing diarrhea, find out its relation with the diet first, and modulate the diet composition if necessary.
2. Avoid eating greasy, high fat, fried food, and stimulating seasoning.
3. Limit your food intake with fiber content in order to reduce the excrement volume.
4. Avoid using milk and dairy products to prevent lactose intolerance from happening.
5. While suffering from severe diarrhea, try liquid diet. For example: Thin rice gruel, clear meat soup, fruit juice, and etc.
6. Watch out for water and electrolyte supplement. Choose food high in potassium like vegetable soup and tomato juice.
7. After bone-marrow transplant and severe diarrhea, give your whole gastrointestinal system a rest, use intravenous injection to supply electrolytic liquid and glucose solution if necessary.