The Necessity of Dietary Restrictions for Cancer Patients

Many patients consulting TCM do not know or understand dietary prohibitions; I write this to explain.

Among critically ill patients, especially advanced and terminal cancer patients, at least one-third are accelerated to death by eating and drinking recklessly. Patients and families usually do not know this; they chase dietary therapy and nutrition, ignoring the damage the food itself does to the body.

When treating disease, TCM imposes many dietary restrictions. Some patients and families, lacking this knowledge and experience, gather food-therapy articles from the internet, or fearing malnutrition, concoct random diets that greatly harm the condition.

The six fu organs should be open, not blocked; unobstructed zang-fu organs are the greatest tonic for the body. When organs are open, the normal intake of food and excretion of waste is assured, and the body absorbs most of its nutrition from ordinary diet—no excessive tonification is needed.

Advanced cancer patients often reach a state in which both the digestive and excretory systems are near collapse, and absorption of both nutrients and drugs is poor. They should avoid hard-to-digest foods and gas-forming ones (such as beans and bean products). All hard, raw, cold, and overly greasy foods, once eaten, make the already frail stomach and intestines even less able to function. Either constipation or diarrhea causes the patient severe suffering; some foods even have serious side effects.

The great majority of patients and families are simply unaware of this and stuff the patient with tonics, wrongly believing that cancer patients can be made robust by supplementation. Once, a terminal cervical cancer patient vomited a large gush of blood after a meal of soft-shelled turtle soup; her friend came to me begging me to stop the bleeding. Another patient reported that her fellow patient, after eating chicken, developed tumor pain and rapid growth. These are living examples of severe harm caused by food, and all cancer patients should take warning.

All gourds have a laxative effect; among Chinese herbs, Dongguaren (winter melon seed) and Tianguazi (sweet melon seed) are clinically mild laxatives, so eating melons risks triggering diarrhea. Once an advanced cancer patient develops diarrhea, strength drains rapidly; after several severe bouts, the patient is basically beyond rescue. Foods like watermelon easily slow gastrointestinal motility; given that advanced patients already have poor gut motility, such further disturbance worsens digestion. People also digest fruit less well than normal food, so fruit and fruit juice are not necessarily good for advanced cancer patients.

So my rule for advanced cancer patients is plain tea and simple food with plain boiled water; a moderate amount of fish is acceptable, but carp, crucian carp, chicken, and lamb—traditional "triggering foods" (fawu)—are forbidden. Simplify the diet as much as possible. Base it on what the patient normally eats, because the gut has memory and digests accustomed foods better; do not deliberately pursue food therapy. For advanced cancer patients, relying on so-called dietary therapy to fight cancer is like a mantis blocking a chariot, yet the side effects of that food therapy can be fatal.

This is even more important when taking Chinese herbs. Treating advanced and terminal cancer is often hard to achieve any effect at all; the doctor must rack his brain. Advanced cancer patients easily have blocked urination and defecation and poor digestion, and the doctor usually designs the medication first to maintain these two most basic physiological functions. Achieving even this is hard; if the patient is not careful with diet, the medicine's effect easily goes to waste. In reality, over a third of cancer patients are finally eaten to death by their own reckless diet.

The disease is the root; the physician is the branch. In treatment the patient is fundamental and the doctor only auxiliary. The patient's voluntary dietary restriction therefore stabilizes the condition and, to the greatest extent, supports the medicine. The nutrition the body needs is basically obtainable from normal food; special tonification is unnecessary. The deficiency of cancer patients is caused by the tumor, not by lack of nutrition.

What the patient eats and drinks should not be considered from the angle of nutrition or anti-cancer effect, but from the angle of maintaining the body's basic digestive and excretory functions. Many so-called anti-cancer folk remedies and food therapies easily collapse the gut and rapidly worsen the body. The first job of patients and families at such a time is to restore the patient's digestion and excretion, not to hastily rush to supplement nutrition or fight cancer with food. As far as I know, the anti-cancer effect of food therapy is basically negligible.