Dietary Supplements During Cancer Care

Eating healthfully during treatment is important to the healing process. Your body needs a wide variety of nutrients to feel good and recover. Although it is safe to eat nutrient-rich foods, such as vegetables and fruit, it may not be safe to take these nutrients as dietary supplements.

Many people feel that if something is natural, such as a vitamin, a mineral, or an herb, it is safe. This is not necessarily true. You may feel that a dietary supplement couldn’t possibly cause problems with your cancer care, but this may not be true either. Some dietary supplements, natural or otherwise, can interact with your cancer medications.

These interactions may make your cancer treatments more toxic to you. This can worsen side effects and may make you very ill. Another possibility is that a dietary supplement may decrease the effectiveness of your cancer treatments. If this happens, medications and procedures may not work as well as they should. You may not get the full benefits of your cancer treatments.

For all of these reasons, it is safest to err on the side of caution during cancer treatment. Do not take any dietary supplements without talking to your doctor first.

Finally, keep in mind that the dietary supplement industry is nearly unregulated. This means there is little quality control in the manufacture of many dietary supplements and nobody is watching over the claims being made about these products. Because of these issues, you may not get what you pay for, the claims about a supplement may not be true, or even worse, a contaminated dietary supplement could make you sick.

With your health at stake, it makes sense to discuss any dietary supplements that you currently use or are planning to use with your doctor and your entire health care team. Remember, you are a member of your health care team, too. Be safe and take care of yourself with the guidance of your health care providers.