S2 Ep4 - Chew on This: The Importance of a Dietitian on Your Care Team

This episode is a 2 parter!

Lora Silver, MS, RDN, CSO, CDN, CNSC an oncology dietitian from Yale Smilow Cancer Center joined me in a conversation about why it's important to have a dietitian on your care team. Food is complicated in all cancers, but particularly CRC. And there is a lot of misinformation out there about it.

Join me in learning how dietitians (and care partners!) can help cancer patients eat better, and feed that gut microbiome too.

Then, join us for part 2 when we talk more specifically about foods to eat in Cancerland, including talking about a session out of the ASCO conference about anti-inflammatory foods and colorectal cancer.

Show Notes:

• American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) - https://www.aicr.org/ - for trusted info on factual information about food and cancer
• Cook For Your Life - https://www.cookforyourlife.org/ - helpful and searchable recipes where you can filter by helpful categories such as health considerations, prep time, or side effects

Helpful Links that Lora wanted to share:

•  Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) offers free nutrition education and consultations to patients and caregivers for all cancer diagnoses https://llsnutrition.org/
• The Cancer Dietitian is a wealth of information and free classes, and I have met her (Julie Lanford) and she is wonderful https://cancerdietitian.com/
• CancerCare provides many free nutrition education resources https://www.cancercare.org/tagged/nutrition
• Livestrong and Maple Tree are good places to start for fitness and physical activity resources that you can access from home and/or in your community https://livestrong.org/resources/ and https://www.mapletreecanceralliance.org/virtual-training/

Thank you to my incredible wife Kristine for helping me to edit these episodes!

• (01:23) - Deciding to become a dietician
• (02:49) - Dietician vs nutritionist - what's the difference? Part 1
• (03:14) - Oncology and diet
• (04:27) - Food and cancer from care partner's perspective
• (05:19) - How can we make it easier to get dieticians on the care team?
• (07:35) - Why is there an extra step? Why not by default?
• (08:59) - Dietician vs nutritionist pt 2
• (11:54) - General nutrition tips for CRC
• (12:33) - Ideally meet with a dietician even before you start treatment
• (13:33) - Diet during cancer treatments
• (14:51) - Good balanced nutrition is so important
• (16:51) - Protein needs during cancer
• (18:21) - Before surgery
• (21:01) - Getting the care partner involved in thinking about diet before surgery
• (22:08) - Survivorship and diet
• (24:32) - Finding trusted sources for diet and cancer info