Glucose & Dietary Supplements

kaitek
kaitek Member Posts: 156 Member
edited March 2014 in Lung Cancer #1
Hi all,

First I'd like to share with fellow caregivers and cancer patients my mother's oncologist's take on dietary supplements.

There is the contention that antioxidant supplements counteract the mechanism of chemotherapy which relies on oxidation to kill cancer cells. Yet, certain antioxidants and supplements boost one's immune system and aids in cancer cell death. So I asked my mother's oncologist and he replied that if my mom wanted, she could withhold the multivitamins on the day of and the day after the chemo treatment. He wasn't strongly opposed to her taking the multivitamins even on those days as long as they weren't megadoses. (She takes multivitamins targeted for seniors so not one vitamin is more than 100% of the RDA.) He wasn't concerned with ginger or garic impacting the treatment.

What he said made sense and something I could understand. Since it is just 2 days without multivitamins, it doesn't seem to risk much, if anything. If anyone has contrary opinions, I'd welcome them.

On glucose, I'd love for people's opinion in reconciling the notion of cancer feeds on sugar we often read about and the many forms of sugar found in foods promoted for fighting cancer. The theory is intuitive as PET scans do rely on cancer cells' uptake of glucose for the reading of the hot spots. Then, when I asked my mom's oncologist about it, he gave a logical response about normal cells needing glucose and starches converting into glucose. Fruits have sugar in the form of fructose. Yet, fruits are an important cancer preventative.

Elementally, aren't fructose, glucose, lactose and other forms of sugar the same? I think the body processes each differently. Would love to hear other's reconciliation with this dilemma or paradox.

Thanks.

Comments

  • reinstones1
    reinstones1 Member Posts: 92
    #2
    Hi-- regarding the sugar issue (in terms of eliminating it from your diet), I thought this was a good article.


    http://health.msn.com/centers/cancer/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100096597
  • kaitek
    kaitek Member Posts: 156 Member
    #3
    reinstones1 said:

    Hi-- regarding the sugar issue (in terms of eliminating it from your diet), I thought this was a good article.


    http://health.msn.com/centers/cancer/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100096597

    Hi reinstones1,

    Good to see you around to keep the conversations going! Thanks for the article link. I will definitely check it out after I log out from here.

    Oh, just for the record, despite my mom's oncologist not objecting to sugar consumption (he just wants my mom to eat anything to keep up her weight and nutrition), I am restricting her from refined sugars (basically white sugars, brown sugar, corn syrup, honey, molasses, etc.). I'm not going to be concerned with her carbohydrates and starches (we're Chinese good gracious and rice is our staple!) or fructose from fruits. I'd rather she get her antioxidants and other good agents from fruits.
  • kaitek
    kaitek Member Posts: 156 Member
    #4
    reinstones1 said:

    Hi-- regarding the sugar issue (in terms of eliminating it from your diet), I thought this was a good article.


    http://health.msn.com/centers/cancer/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100096597

    Hi again,

    That was a good read, reinstones1. That doctor's take echoes that of my mother's oncologist. It certainly relieves me of my own sweet tooth and reassures me that I'm not harming my mother when I inadvertently feed her food with any form of sugar. As a practice and routine, though, I may stick with minimizing the refined sugar. I've read of refined sugar not being good for our health somewhere before where it was stated that sugar could impair our immune system if eaten too much. That alone changed my sugar intake (I can't say I'm addicted to anything). Once you reduce your sugar, you will find that things are too sweet when you become used to the lesser intake.

    I won't worry about my mother eating fruits and the sugars in them.

    Thanks again for the article link.

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