Recently, I received an excellent question regarding the best way to eat to improve blood counts and increase potassium levels. I wanted to share this question and my comments with the group.
Question: "What types of food can help improve blood counts and potassium?"
Food vs. Nutrition
Unfortunately, there aren't any specific foods that are proven to improve blood counts. However, good nutrition overall is proven to help your body heal and help your blood counts recover as quickly as possible during cancer treatment.
Weight Matters
One of the single most important things you can do during cancer treatment to help your body heal and to help your blood counts recover is to avoid losing weight. If you think about this a bit, it makes sense.
Weight loss occurs when you are eating fewer calories than your body needs for basic functions, such as breathing and metabolism. This forces your body to use its own tissue for energy. In an ideal world, all of this tissue that is burned for energy would be fat tissue. However, during cancer treatment your body is not living in an ideal world.
Cancer treatment puts additional stress on your body. This added stress makes it harder for your body to burn only fat tissue when you aren't getting enough calories to maintain weight. This means your body will dip into other areas, like muscle and other body cells to make up for the energy you are not getting from food.
When this happens, when your body is breaking down its own tissue simply to get enough energy for basic functioning, it is too busy to rebuild tissue. Simply put, if your body is busy breaking down tissue, it won't have the energy to build tissue, including blood cells.
In a nutshell, losing weight takes energy away from your body's ability to rebuild red and white blood cells. Keep your weight steady and your body can better use those calories you are eating to make new blood cells.
Beyond maintaining your weight, you want to focus on getting in as much healthy, nutritious food as possible. Fortunately, it is the healthiest foods that also are rich in potassium. This leads to the second part of your question.
Potassium
If you are feeling reasonably well, you are not losing weight, and you are not experiencing symptoms that interfere with your ability to eat normally, you should focus on the healthiest diet possible. This means eating plenty of vegetables; fruit; whole grains; and legumes or starchy beans, peas, and lentils. An easy approach for healthy eating is to follow the 75% - 25% principle.
Every time you eat, make sure that 75% (three-fourths) of your plate is covered by healthy plant food, including vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and legumes. The remaining 25% (one-fourth) should be covered by lean protein, such as fish, chicken, or lean beef. If you prefer to eat a more vegetarian diet, use legumes as your lean protein source.
Following the 75% - 25% principle will help you eat plenty of healthy food without getting bogged down in counting servings or tracking exactly what goes into your mouth.
Plants for Potassium
As I mentioned, this eating pattern also is rich in potassium and will help you get more of this important nutrient. Plant foods, especially vegetables and fruit, are the best natural sources of potassium.
In particular, the foods that rank high in potassium include:
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Tomato juice (go for low sodium varieties)
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Orange juice
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Beet greens (lightly cooked, not boiled)
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Beans, especially white beans
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Dates
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Raisins
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Potato (regular and sweet)
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Spinach
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Plums
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Apricots
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Bananas
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Papayas
Remember, these aren't the only foods that contain plenty of potassium. Any type of vegetable, fruit, or bean will provide you with a good dose of potassium.
Weight Loss
As I mentioned, this is an ideal way to eat, as long as you are not losing weight. If you are going through treatment and you are losing weight, the most important thing you can do is to eat enough to stop, or at least minimize, the weight loss. The bottom line is that losing weight makes it harder for your body to heal and rebuild itself, including rebuilding those important blood cells.
If you are losing weight, ask your doctor or nurse about medical options for better managing your symptoms. In addition to this, you can go to the Nutrition section of Caring4Cancer.com at http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition. There you can click on links for information on Nutrition and Cancer Treatment, Symptom Support, and Recipes. All of these areas will give you ideas, tips, and hints for better eating during cancer treatment.
Nutritionist Suzanne
Suzanne Dixon, MPH, MS, RD