A good lifestyle for patients with esophageal cancer during the recovery period after surgery and radiotherapy is important to promote physical recovery, improve quality of life, and prolong survival.
Foods to be restricted during the recovery period of esophageal cancer include:
Eat as little or no processed meat as possible, such as bacon, sausage, lunch meat, and hot dogs.
Meats are preferred to white meats such as fish and poultry, followed by red meats such as livestock, and as little fatty meat as possible. If you want to eat red meat, it is recommended that you choose lean meat, no more than 300 to 500 g per week.
Try to choose a vegan diet more than 3 days a week, replacing some of the meat with plant protein (such as soy products like tofu and soybean skin).
For cooking, oven bake or braise or boil meat, and minimize frying or charcoal grilling.
Limit alcoholic beverages. Anyone in the population should avoid long-term alcohol consumption and drink as little or no alcoholic beverages as possible. This is because alcohol increases the risk of esophageal, colorectal, breast, oral, and liver cancers. Likewise, alcohol consumption is not recommended for patients with esophageal cancer during their recovery period to avoid inducing tumor recurrence. For senior drinkers who cannot kick the habit, it is recommended that women have no more than one drink and men no more than two drinks per day (one drink is approximately: 350 ml beer, 150 ml wine, 50 ml white wine).
Limit the intake of sweet snacks and sugary drinks to avoid blood sugar fluctuations that increase insulin release and promote tumor cell growth.
Foods that should also be restricted for esophageal cancer include: hot food (above 65°C), coarse and hard, greasy, super spicy, and foods fried at high temperature, grilled over open fire, and salted.
.
It should be noted that for patients with esophageal cancer, except for the foods described above, foods that cannot be eaten due to allergies, or medications being taken that need to be avoided according to medical advice, it is not advocated that you should overly avoid eating foods that may affect the nutritional balance.