fasting
Comments
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djmmom - During rads I ate only after treatment. You could fast 1 day a week or the FMD diet. See above.
carmstr - I lost my taste for coffee during chemo. It came back! I recommend food with gelatin to break your fast (bone broth/homemade jello). Chemo damages the cells in your gut. Gelatin can help heal the damage. That may prevent or reduce diarrhea. Glad you have an appetite!
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Thank you, Serenity. I'm glad you mentioned Pho: it's my go-to, comfort food, and so good for us all (and good for fasting, if you avoid the rice noodles!). I've also used (as a low-call snack) the Sun-Bird powdered versions of hot and sour soup and egg drop soup. I find it in my grocery's "oriental foods" section, and all you do is add 3 cups (directions say 2.5 cups but I use extra so not quite so salty) of water to the mix, boil, and then stir in one beaten egg for 1 min. I think they say on the package "3 servings" but if one serving is 45 cals, then two servings would be 67 cals. each. This soup is so satisfying. It keeps my hunger at bay for a few hours.
Claire in AZ
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Regarding fasting during radiation - I was told by my RO and her nurses that a really good, nourishing diet with more protein than usual was absolutely essential during RT, along with plenty of hydration and no sun. Lots of fruits and veggies were encouraged but NO antioxidant supplements other than those in my multi-vitamin.
I've done intermittent fasting for years and can't imagine NOT living that way but I'm not sure I think that fasting during radiation would be wise. There's a LOT of cell death and regeneration taking place and in some ways it's a much different process than what happens during chemo (very targeted, for one). Your body needs to replenish its cellular building blocks on a daily basis.
In addition, because radiation is every day for weeks and the effects are cumulative, you don't have that break in treatment that you do during chemo.
Do what you like, of course, but bear in mind that there are differences between what's happening in your body. If you're an info junkie, see if you can get your RO to open up on what's really happening during radiation and why - it's pretty interesting.
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Claire - We're lucky to have a Vietnamese restaurant that for takeout orders puts the pho ingredients in separate containers. I would leave out the noodles, but the broth on its own was delicious. Thanks for the soup tip!
Hopeful - The FMD diet I suggested is not a fast. I did intermittent fasting during radiation and ate every day. My skin held up and healed well. My routine was to eat prunes right after treatment. At home I would snack on a little seaweed (7g of dulse) while making an omelette with hopefully some leftovers. We usually would have a protein and vegetable dinner. Afterwards I would eat homemade jello for the gelatin (good source of protein/great for skin, nails, hair). Water all day.
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SerenityStat - I've done IF for years - long before bc. I was referring to the concept of fasting as discussed earlier in the link. Your approach seems very sound. PS - my skin did great, too. As in, my MDs were shocked. Sometimes being obsessive pays off
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Yes, obsessiveness was required during treatment especially radiation! That was a daily grind. I'm less strict on my diet at the moment. I need to enjoy my food without thinking too much about it. Focusing on work and exercise instead.
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I'm still doing a daily 13+ hour fast. See link from b.c.org (who also points out that there were a few probs with the study).
http://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/can-fast...
I put a little coconut creamer in my morning coffee so my stomach doesnt' grumble so much; I stop eating the night before by 730-8 p.m. and don't eat breakfast--or brunch, really--till around 11. During the days I teach that meal will be more of a snack--a protein bar and a banana or piece of fruit--during the summer I usually make a protein shake from egg white protein powder, ice, water, and a yogurt. When it's really cold outside it's fruit and 1 package of organic oatmeal. I don't eat again till mid-afternoon, and save my "largest" daily meal for around 5-6 p.m.
So I guess that's kind of fasting; at any rate, it fulfills the 13+ hour recommendation from the above research article.
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Hi, thinking about my next fast. This last chemo went so well, I will do it again. I ate nothing only water and black coffee, no vitamins or supplements for 7 days, 5 days before, the day of,and 24 hours after my chemo. However, I will take your advice, Serenity of gelatin as my first solid food to minimized the diarrhea this time.
My side effects this time were very minimal, I wasn't really hungry, but I was looking forward to food, so I ate, and it tasted great. I did not have any of the taste issues I did my first chemo. I did not have any nausea at all, not even the queasiness. My blood test was even better 5 days after chemo this time. My WBC count was 3.9, last time at the 5th day it was 3.4. My coffee was fine after a day or so, and I am back to drinking it all day long, I need to drink more water though. I have not done my exercises like I should, I need to get doing that now, no reason not to, I feel fine, just putting it off. It is hot here and I don't have air conditioning. My BP has been low, however.
I will start this next fast on Thursday morning, and it looks like this will become a very long ordeal. I have recently been diagnosed as Her-2+ and will probably include hermaceptin every 3 weeks for a year, very soon. I am not sure if I will fast every three weeks during that treatment, but I will probably do it to gain the most value of the treatment I can.
I will do the intermittent starvation of 13 hours during my rads in July with the full week during the 2 hermaceptin treatments. I try to do that now anyways, and I am on a high protein diet when I am not fasting, I can afford to lose about 20 more lbs to be at my ideal weight. I have lost about 70 lbs in the past year on this low carb, high protein diet and truly feel great, just wished it didn't come with this cancer thing...
I will continue the updates here as I do this. I did lose about 10 lbs and gained most of it back already.
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Congratulations on the weight loss! That is impressive. It's a good idea to have a little extra padding when fasting during chemo. I worried about losing too much weight.
I'm glad that you're doing so well with fasting. Without air conditioning, you may be sweating out even more minerals. I would supplement minerals by eating a spoonful of blackstrap molasses. Then drink a large glass of water to wash it down. I also took weekly salt baths using both Epsom salt and magnesium chloride. I drank coconut water which has lots of potassium.
As for fasting during Herceptin, you can decide based on how you feel then. I don't recall seeing anyone fasting during Herceptin.
You're doing great!
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I am doing Intermittent daily fasting, about 17 hours, while I'm being treated with weekly Taxol and Herceptin. I plan to continue when the Taxol is done and I will be having weekly Herceptin until at least December. The biggest benefit that has been immediately obvious is -improved sleep. While I fall asleep easily, I have had difficulty staying asleep past four hours for years and years. With this IDF regimen, I don't eat after 6:30 pm, go to bed by 10pm (sometimes earlier) and wake up once, about 2 am, go back to sleep and don't really wake up again until 5:30am. This is a huge improvement! I have to think it will benefit me in many ways.
Fasting until 11 am or noon is not that difficult. I drink coffee all morning, half caff, usually black, sometimes a very small piece of fruit, just to get the yucky taste out of my mouth, but that's it. And I used to be a big breakfast eater.
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Weekly Herceptin? Hmm. How many treatments? Will it still be a full year? Did you get a port? Very happy your sleeping is better. I hope I am that lucky when they add the herceptin to my regime. I am having a picline every 3 weeks currently, but adding that herceptin of 17 more treatments, I think they will run out of places to do the picline, I only have 1 arm they can use.
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Yes,, Herceptin weekly for a year. I started in December with a loading dose of TCHP, and one of those drugs gave me acute ITP (destroying my own platelets), which was scary. Hematologist thought Herceptin might be the culprit. Switched to AC plus T. We added Low dose Herceptin all by itself to see what happened. So far, so good, but keeping it at low dose weekly instead of x3 every three weeks. Does that make sense? Yes, I got my port in November and was so thankful for it when I ended up with the ITP and multiple blood draws every day in the hospital, platelet infusions, immunoglobulin infusions. That port saved me from a lot of misery. I, too, only had one arm they could use. And one of the side effects of low platelets is bruising. I looked awful. Anyway, all seems to be under control now. Weekly H.not hurting blood counts.
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Thank you for posting updates on how fasting with chemo is going. I'm still waiting on my Oncotype score. I'm supposed to know if chemo is in my future by next week. In the meantime...just reading and appreciating ya'll.
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I started listening toThe Intermittent Fasting Podcast. They talk about the various types and approaches to IF, benefits, how-to's, etc. Both of the women have books out. I think one hosts a group on Facebook, but I don't Facebook, so can't speak to that.
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What counts as fasting? If I have coffee in the morning with sugar substitute and a bit of unsweetened almond or coconut milk, is that still fasting? I'm trying to do the 13 hours a day thing, and can make it 13 hours from dinner to breakfast, but I still need that jolt of caffeine in the morning, usually at about the 12 hour mark. Am I screwing things up by doing that? Drinking my coffee black is not an option
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I've read about 50-60 calories will break a fast. I like my cream, too.
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grandmax, my understanding is that coffee is fine and up to 50 calories of creamer OK but the artificial sweetener is a no no. Research shows that even the taste of sweet, sugar or not, is enough to startbthe release of insulin. Even a sweet thing in the mouth that is spit out-like toothpaste. It's the brain, not the gut, that controls the chemical reaction. I guzzle coffee all morning, sometimes with creamer
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Hi I have been "time restricted eating" aka fasting for several months now. I am at currently at 13 hours of fasting 5 days a week. Goal is 6 days a week. My understanding is that anything but water breaks the fast but looks like there are different thoughts on that. There have been no gold standard double blind studies on this so still experimental.
It took a bit to get used to-seems like it would be easy-but doing all of your eating in 11 hours or less involves some changes. I have a bigger breakfast now, snacks through the day and a decent lunch. I am pretty much eating between 7am-6pm. You don't have to do it every day so you can go out and have a nice evening meal on occasion, no problem.
Link to an interesting video on the subject:
Ruth Patterson, Ph.D. on Time-Restricted Eating in Humans & Breast Cancer Prevention
I haven't noticed any major changes as a result other than sleeping more soundly. Just one more thing in the array of things to prevent recurrence.
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Here's a good NCI article pointing out the + and - of their study. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC44174...
Particularly interesting is this quote, disputing the "water only" claim. "We estimated nighttime fasting duration by calculating the time between the first and last calorie-containing (5 kcal) food or beverage consumed for each 24-hour dietary recall day". Coffee has no calories, nor does tea, so it seems from this study that those would be fine to have in the a.m. while waiting to eat.
It ends: "To our knowledge, this is the first study to document that a longer nighttime fasting duration in women was significantly associated with improved glycemic regulation and putatively with reduced breast cancer risk. Large-scale randomized trials are needed to confirm whether a habitual prolonged nighttime fasting regimen results in favorable changes in biomarkers of glycemic control and breast cancer risk." -
And a plain-language article from last year: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-fasting-c...
This topic is particularly interesting to me because I have been restricting my eating to more than 13 hours for a long time now, and I also fasted 48 hours before each chemo infusion and then the day of infusion because it seems to make any bad cells more sensitive to uptake, meaning any cancer cells will take up the chemo more easily. To summarize, all our cells are hungry, including the cancer ones. If we starve all cells, then when they are fed--no matter what they are fed--they'll be more receptive to uptake. I didn't fast completely, but studies show that 500 or less calories a day pre-chemo worked, so I restricted to that total or less.
Claire
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And a plain-language article from last year: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-fasting-c...
This topic is particularly interesting to me because I have been restricting my eating to more than 13 hours for a long time now, and I also fasted 48 hours before each chemo infusion and then the day of infusion because it seems to make any bad cells more sensitive to uptake, meaning any cancer cells will take up the chemo more easily. To summarize, all our cells are hungry, including the cancer ones. If we starve all cells, then when they are fed--no matter what they are fed--they'll be more receptive to uptake. I didn't fast completely, but studies show that 500 or less calories a day pre-chemo worked, so I restricted to that total or less.
Finally, here's a pretty recent article on stevia and how it seems to lower blood sugar. (I like this topic; it's allowing me to vibe my researcher gene, wink).
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170411104441.htm
Claire
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clairinaz those are very interesting studies. I think going 13 hours between meals should be a very doable plan to begin. Thanks
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It is easy; my husband is even doing it with me in hopes he can lose a few pounds and perhaps protect himself further from certain cancers that run in his family.
OT, that is SO weird that my previous response was double-posted. I only wrote it once.
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Thanks I'm very sure my husband will be doing this with me as well. Breakfast will be the big change for me. I usually eat breakfast at 6:30 before going to work. I'll just have to take something very easy to eat in a classroom full of kids.
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Kira, I take nuts to work every day for breakfast. Very easy to eat- no refrigeration or heating required.
I think the 13 hour fast is very doable. I try to go as long as possible in the morning. Most days I eat my nuts around 10:30 and then I try not to eat anything after dinner but sometimes I'll eat a little snack no later than 8. That way I am always getting at least 13 hours. What I have found on both fasting and intermittent fasting is it gets easier with practice.
Grandma3X - I learned to drink my coffee black but it was hardest thing I did after BC. For me it needed sugar or sweetener - I could go either way on the milks/creams. I did it though. Turns out I need the caffeine more than I need it to be tasty, I think. A sure sign of addiction?
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I can easily wait till 10:30 or so. I usually try to drink a smoothy in the morning which I think would be okay at school. I usually eat about 6 so very good timing
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Today is the 5th day after my 3rd infusion, but the chemo is all changed, I am no longer on the cytoxan and still on the taxotere, added in perjenta, heceptin, and carboplatin.I need 3 more of these.
. I finished my 2nd fasting of water and coffee only for 5 days, then day of, and 24 hours after. This time I ate only jello, as my first day of food after my fast I made it myself with koolaid and swerve sweetener. I did not have the diarrhea I had last time. I was hungry again this time, but was a bit more careful what I ate. Then, I lost my appetite completely on the 3rd day and 4th. I did not gain my weight back and actually lost 2 more lbs from last time. I was weak and sleepy. I decided I should not lose any more weight right now, if I want to continue these fasts. My low carb diet is still my diet of choice, but I will eat some more carbs now to keep my weight up. I need to do a total of 6 now. I have 3 more to do. (originally it was only 4) I am also getting a port next time, my infusion was not a pleasant experience, I was there until almost midnight, and my pic line was leaking and painful, so getting the port will be best. I will also not allow them to start my infusions in the afternoon ever again, mornings only for me. I also want my own nurse back, she was attentive and caring, these ones... I was just passed off to the lowest senior nurse, I had 2 different nurses, one relieved the other at 9:30PM Just me in the room in the dark, all alone, not even a TV, no warm blankets, or even coffee, unless I asked, and I didn't want to bother her, so I didn't ask. The nurse came in to change the next IV bag was the only time I saw her. I sure was glad I didn't have any reactions to these 3 new drugs they added this time. I won't be letting that happen again. If I can't have my chemo in the AM, then I won't have it. Being there all night alone and in the dark till midnight is crazy!
My SE this time are I was shaky during the chemo infusion, I had to hold the IV pole to go to the bathroom to keep my balance. That shakiness continued for a few more days till the 5th day. I had no nausea at all and food tastes fine and hunger was off an on Day 4-5. I had a bit of diarrhea day 2, but only once, then day 3-4 constipation, but I did nothing and it seemed to work itself out I ate a flaxseed muffin and eggs and sausage for breakfast on Day 5. I am thinking that might have helped the constipation. I have been slightly weak, and need to sit down periodically on Day 5, but was able to go out and go shopping for a few items and go visiting today. So I believe I am on the mend. No nuelesta pain at all. Taking the claritin. I am losing a lot more hair this time it seems and I am still cold capping with the dignicap.
My WBC was amazing this time and in the normal range, even better than the last time. So was the rest of my blood, all great news!
Next infusion is July 18.
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Finally got the ok to start chemo just shy of 9 weeks after surgery. I'm in the infusion room now, glad to be getting started. I'm 90 hours into my fast. Will eat again 24 hours after the second medicine is finished. Have been hungry, but very energetic and optimistic.
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Hope everything went well and you have minimal side effects!
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Thank you Serenity! First infusion went flawlessly. Felt great the whole time. Something in the infusion raised my blood sugar to 123! That's high for having fasted for four days!
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