After a recent visit with our oncologist to discuss our plan of attack against this dreadful disease; we were bombarded with many, many pieces of literature which discussed the guidelines to follow during a chemo regiment. Among these guidelines, we were to meet with a nutritionist.
When the human body endures cycles of chemotherapy; it can break down your immunity or defenses, which makes diet very important. If you ingest a food with certain additives, etc. and you have low immunity, an infection can occur which is dangerous to the person receiving chemotherapy.
The word “nutritionist” alone, is intimidating to me.
I pictured a woman toned, of course who eats healthy, and who is now preparing a menu for us to follow during chemo, in which I will be required to cook foods we never eat, and eliminate the foods we do.
I imagined food scales, counting calories, fat grams, and now feeling an overwhelming guilt because I am assuming it had been my cooking, or that it at least had contributed to my husband being afflicted with NHL (Non Hodgkins Lympohoma) .
Before entering her office, I immediately replaced my Coke with some kind of vitamin water I never heard of, to be well, responsible?
And then the information came out of her mouth. It was almost as shocking to me as hearing the diagnosis itself!
“By all accounts, DO NOT eat any "diet", "low cal", "fat free", or "imitation" anything!!”
As it turns out, when sugar, butter, and all those "natural" ingredients in the foods we eat are taken out, to make them low fat, or lower in calories; they are replaced with chemicals that are to have the same flavors we are searching for. These very chemicals in all the diet colas, imitation butters, and imitation eggs are extremely offensive to our bodies.
I discovered this is whether we are receiving chemotherapy or not!
Our bodies do not know how to process these chemicals.
I asked if eating organically would be better. The nutritionist also forbade eating organically during chemo. Unfortunately, it has been revealed that many organic growers have been fined for duping the public into believing their fruits and vegetables had not been treated with pesticides or insecticides when actually they had been treated with these chemicals. This practice has not occurred with all organic growers, but being that there have been some growers duping the people; simply, the risk is not worth the reward!
After we left her office with our heads still spinning, I was a bit comforted from my initial fears. When I glanced back in her office to see her pull out her lunch, I saw a club sandwich and a bag of chips. There were no alfalfa sprouts in sight!
