Quality of Life: How to Fight Fatigue During and After Cancer Treatment

Fatigue is often the number one complaint of cancer patients, even before pain.  According to the American Cancer Society, 90 percent of patients in cancer treatment experience fatigue that can range from “mild lethargy to feeling completely wiped out. During the treatment, the body is subjected to all kinds of drugs and radiation and as you can imagine, the patient is extremely worn out physically and emotionally.  In addition to the direct effects of the treatment, there is the regimen of drugs prescribed to manage its side effects.  Moreover, the radiation therapy causes a cumulative fatigue that may last several months after treatment.

Needless to say, going through such an obstacle course empties your natural reserves.  This lack of energy can wreak havoc on a cancer patient’s daily life. Suddenly, a task as simple as grocery shopping feels as overwhelming as climbing the Kilimanjaro.  So what is the best way to replenish one’s energy level?  There is no silver bullet for fighting fatigue. It has so many different causes and patterns and it varies so much from one person to the other that it may require the use of many strategies for effective treatment.

There are things you can control and things you can do to help your body fight fatigue.  Years of medical research and patients studies have opened new perspectives to fight fatigue with a three-throng approach:  eating appropriately, exercising and sleeping well.

Let’s start with food. Cancer treatment is like competing in the Olympics; it increases the nutritional demands of the body. The body is working hard to fight cancer, fight infection, and cope with the effects of treatment. While healthy eating will not get rid of fatigue, it will nourish your body with natural energy sources which will certainly help.  First of all, hungry or not, eat small, frequent meals to maintain a stable blood sugar level. This is the equivalent of throwing an extra log on the fire so that it doesn’t burn out. It’s easier to keep a fire going than it is to rebuild it.  So try tο eat low glycemic foods such as whole grains, brown rice, oatmeal, and green vegetables and avoid junky foods that bring you an extra dose of sugar and energy but will leave you empty when the blood sugar drops.  Eat a lot of proteins: they help repair body tissue, strengthen the immune system, and ensure growth, traits that make them assets for a cancer patient.  Don’t forget to eat colored veggies and fruits: vitamins and antioxidants will help you to stay strong.  Lastly, drink up.  Dehydration is a common problem associated with cancer treatment. In fact many cancer patients get so dehydrated that they have to receive fluids intravenously. It is important to drink a lot of water, as well as fruit juices that also bring vitamins and other nutrients to your body, like pomegranate juice for instance.  Beware of soda and sport drinks that can be filled with sugar and have the same short term effects as junk food.

Now that you have improved your energy level by eating the foods that your body needs, it is time to consider getting some exercise.  Obviously, the choice of physical activity will depend on each patient’s strength.  It may well start with taking a few steps outside to enjoy breathing fresh air, before graduating to longer walks, bicycle ergo-meter, or wii-fit challenges. Regardless, whatever goals you can reasonably set for yourself. Studies have found that overall, exercise has a positive effect on physical and psychological functioning of cancer patients while in treatment.  Psychological improvements to be expected include a decrease in total mood disturbances, decrease in depression and fewer problems sleeping, which brings us to the our last strategy.
The last weapon in the fight against fatigue is getting a good night’s sleep.  Why not try yoga as part of your alternative regimen?  Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that even twice-weekly yoga sessions can improve sleep quality, decrease dependency on medications and mitigate some of the fatigue that follows intensive chemotherapy.  Specifically, those participants in the study doing yoga reported a significant reduction in sleeping pill use, better sleeping habits and half the fatigue of the control group. In fact, while yoga participants curbed their medication intake by 20 percent, members of the control group increased their dosages by 5 percent during the study period.

In conclusion, fatigue is not a fatality and there are things you can do to help your body recover from cancer treatment.  This article focuses on strategies to improve the physical quality of life of cancer patients, but another key element is to keep a good moral.