- Hello, my name is Tanya Craven, I'm a registered dietician with Nashville General Hospital.

On today's "For Your Good Health".

We're going to be talking about eating healthy during your cancer treatments.

Hi, how are you doing?

- [Patient] I'm okay.

- We consider nutrition part of your cancer treatment that's gonna hopefully help your body endure and accept that treatment the best it can.

(soft music) Talking to your doctor, your nurses, all of your care team folks, and then getting a dietician to make your individual plan work for you during your treatment.

During treatments, you may have those side effects.

The nausea, maybe some vomiting, so we may change your diet to more liquids, things that are easier to tolerate.

Not a lot of spicy foods, not a lot of fried foods, smaller portions throughout the day, little snacks, mini meals, those type of things may help with that.

This is the one time the dietician says, eat, eat, eat.

You can have more calories in your desserts and sweets, your fats, so salad dressings, mayonnaise, butter, the heavy cream, all the things that hopefully will enhance the flavor of your foods, and then those snacks in between where you may not normally snack.

We can encourage that to get those extra calories and protein in.

So if you're having trouble digesting solid foods or having some nausea, you may wanna go to what we call a full liquid diet.

That will include your dairy products, so milk, yogurt, ice cream, homemade milkshakes.

You can add in fruit juices, vegetable juices, like mixed vegetables.

And then there's also the commercial supplements, all different kinds, flavors, and they're affordable.

Food safety is another portion of your treatment plan.

During this time your body is not as healthy and not as strong during treatments, and so we want to wash your hands, make sure your food is stored at the right temperature, make sure you're not keeping leftovers too long.

So just some tips and reminders of things that we take for granted, but during your body's immune system and changes there, you wanna just be safe.

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