Nutrition For The Cancer Patient
What Do I Feed My Pet With Cancer?
A diet tailored to the veterinary oncology patient is integral to their overall care plan, helping them cope with the disease and treatment, maintaining their health, and improving their overral quality of life. Cancer is linked to many changes in your pet’s metabolism such as reduced appetite and weight loss, which indicate malnutrition. Cancer treatments might also negatively impact their appetite or cause gastrointestinal signs. Feeding a balanced diet filled with the necessary nutrients will help your pet feel their best on their road to recovery.
The Importance Of A Positive Energy Balance
Pets with cancer can lose weight for a number of reasons including increased metabolic rate, changes in preference of the taste of food, gastrointestinal problems caused by cancer treatment, amongst others. Therefore, it is crucial for your pet to maintain a positive energy balance or, in simpler terms, your pet should consume more calories than what it’s body is utilizing. Adding fat to your pet’s diet is a great way to boost calorie content! It is recommended that fat make up 25%-40% of the dry matter content in their diet.
What Can I Do To Get My Pet To Eat?
- Smaller meals and more feeding times
- Change the texture! Add water or broth
- Warm the food to enhance its aroma and taste
- If your pet has not eaten for three days, contact your veterinarian. It might need an appetite stimulant!
- Attempt employing interactive feeding activities such as feeding mats. This will increase your pet’s interest in its food!
- Consider assisted feeding if your pet is consistently not wanting to eat
The Following Nutrients Are Essential For Your Pet’s Diet
Protein
Unlike fat and carbohydrates, the body doesn’t have storage reserves of protein. Tumor cells drain the body of the nutrient needed by healthy cells and can cause a negative protein balance in the body. Lean muscle loss is a sign of inadequate protein, and too little protein can also cause GI signs, decreased immune function, and changes in overall protein function in the body. Cancer patients’ diets should contain as much protein as the animal will tolerate.
Carbohydrates
Tumor cells are very energy-hungry, and many are dependent on glucose, an energy source found in carbohydrates. The body can get energy from fat and protein as well, so limiting the portion of calories in the diet that come from carbohydrates can limit easy access to energy by tumor cells. For many types of cancer, a diet with a higher fat-to-carbohydrate ratio can shift energy balance back towards the healthy cells.
Prebiotics
The gut microbiome and all of its effects on the body are not fully understood, but it is a complex system that is known to impact both healthy and sick animals. Many cancer patients experience GI symptoms, either from the cancer itself or from many of the treatments. Certain chemotherapy drugs and other medications involved in cancer treatment can cause GI symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea, which can make further nutritional treatment of cancer more difficult. Prebiotics, which are substances that healthy, normal gut microbes use to maintain a gut health and stool quality, can help alleviate symptoms in cancer patients. A good mix of digestible fibers can help cancer patients maintain a good balance of organisms in their gut microbiome.
Omega-3 FA
Inflammation is often a component of weight loss and muscle loss in cancer patients. Omega-3 fatty acids play a role in decreasing inflammation throughout the body. EPA, a type of omega-3 fatty acid, has also been shown to help cancer patients maintain lean muscle by preventing protein breakdown that can be caused by certain types of tumors. Omega-3 fatty acids are a common component of many veterinary diets and can also be supplemented separately to help cancer patients get more of the nutrients they need to help slow the negative effects of cancer. Contact your veterinarian to see how you can incorporate these into your pet’s diet.
Nutritional support and a nutritional assessment for veterinary cancer patients should go hand in hand with their diagnosis and treatment plan. A unique nutrition plan should be developed for each individual case, but overall goals should remain the same:
- Preserving lean muscle mass
- Minimizing metabolic and gastrointestinal intolerance to food
- Improving the pet’s quality of life
Your nutrition team will support you and your pet every step of the way!