What are the dietary choices for breast cancer patients?

  The diet of breast cancer patients should be easily absorbed, with sufficient protein and vitamins, and should be diverse and nutritionally balanced.  Balanced diet is the best way for cancer patients to maintain normal weight after surgery. The diet should be balanced, diversified, not partial, not taboo, with meat and vegetable, coarse and fine. Use more steaming, boiling and stewing when cooking, and minimize fried food.  (1) Provide protein foods that can be easily digested and absorbed, such as milk, eggs, fish and soy products, which can improve the body’s ability to fight cancer. Among them, milk and eggs can improve the protein disorder after radiotherapy.  (2) Eat appropriate amount of sugar to supplement calories. Patients with high-dose radiation therapy can have their body’s sugar metabolism destroyed, glycogen decreases sharply, lactic acid in blood increases and cannot be reused; and insulin deficiency is aggravated. So it is better to supplement glucose, and it is also advisable to eat more honey, rice, noodles, potatoes and other sugar-rich foods to supplement calories.  (3) Moderate diet Foods with anti-cancer effects, such as mushrooms, black fungus, garlic, seaweed, mustard and royal jelly, and other foods.  (4) Vitamins A and C have the effect of stopping cell malignancy and proliferation and increasing the stability of epithelial cells. Vitamin C can also prevent the general symptoms of radiation damage and increase the level of white blood cells; vitamin E can promote cell division and delay cell aging; vitamin B1 can promote patients’ appetite and reduce the symptoms caused by radiation therapy. Therefore, more foods rich in the above vitamins should be eaten, such as fresh vegetables, fruits, sesame oil, cereals, beans and animal offal.  (5) Diversify the diet, pay attention to the color, aroma, taste and shape to promote the appetite of patients; cook food by steaming, boiling and stewing more often, avoid foods that are difficult to digest and forbid drinking alcohol.  (6) For those who have difficulty in chewing, swallowing, digestion and absorption and lack of special nutritional elements after tumor surgery in various parts, different diets and supplementation of the lacking nutritional elements can be given according to the situation, and compound nutritional elements diet can be given if necessary to enhance patients’ resistance.  (7) If necessary, some blood-producing health products such as gum and red dates can be consumed, and oral blood-raising and whitening drugs and vitamin B4 can also be taken.