Good nutrition is important in preparation for your cancer treatment and for overall good health. Eating the right kinds of foods before treatment can help you feel better and stay stronger. It can help you:
Good nutrition is also important when you start to increase your exercise and activity.
The dietary advice you should follow will depend on whether you are underweight, have lost weight without planning to, or have a poor appetite.
Nutritional screening is used to look for any problems with unplanned weight loss or your appetite. Your healthcare team may ask you questions about your weight, appetite and ability to eat. If you are worried about your appetite or any unplanned weight loss you can use the BAPEN nutritional screening tool to check your risk. The malnutrition screening tool will tell you if you are at low, medium or high risk, and give you first-line advice to help you overcome some of these problems. If your result is high risk its important to contact your healthcare team and request a referral to a dietitian for individual advice and support.
If you have a good appetite and have not had any unplanned weight loss, you should follow a healthy, balanced diet.
Following a diagnosis of cancer it is common to have lost weight or have difficulty eating and drinking. This can be due to anxiety and worry caused by the diagnosis, difficulty swallowing or chewing or a change in the way your body digests and uses your food and drink you eat.
Good nutrition can prevent you from becoming malnourished. Malnutrition is a condition caused by the lack of key nutrients. It can cause you to lose weight and become weak, tired, have difficulty fighting infections and complete planned cancer treatments. It is important you prevent any unplanned weight loss and maintain a good nourishing diet.
The advice on these pages is designed to help you prepare for the treatment ahead and support you through to recovery.
If you need further advice and support please discuss this with your key worker or healthcare professional.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.