Nutrition During and After Cancer Treatment
Eating can change significantly during cancer treatment and recovery.
Your nutritional needs may increase at the same time that treatment makes eating more difficult. Changes to appetite, taste, energy levels, digestion and your ability to prepare or enjoy food can all affect your nutritional intake.
Our dietitians can work alongside your healthcare team to provide individualised nutrition support during and after cancer treatment.
Depending on your needs, we may help with:
- maintaining adequate energy and protein intake
- supporting muscle strength and nutritional status
- managing poor appetite
- managing changes in taste and food preferences
- finding foods that are easier to tolerate during treatment
- supporting nutrition before and after surgery
- managing nutrition-related treatment side effects
- maintaining hydration
- keeping meals flexible and as enjoyable as possible
- safe food handling
- assessing whether nutritional supplements are required
- reviewing vitamin and mineral supplementation where appropriate
- supporting changing nutritional needs during recovery.
There may be times when meeting your energy and nutritional requirements becomes the immediate priority. We can help you navigate these changes and find practical ways to get the nutrition you need.
As your treatment and recovery progress, we’ll continue to adapt our recommendations with you.
Nutrition Support After a Stroke
A stroke can change the way you eat in many different ways.
You may experience changes to your appetite, ability to prepare meals, memory, movement, independence or swallowing. These changes can make it more difficult to eat and drink enough to meet your nutritional needs.
Our dietitians can help assess your nutritional intake and develop strategies that make eating easier while supporting recovery and ongoing health.
Following a stroke, you may experience:
- difficulty using your arms or hands to prepare food or eat
- changes to memory or thinking that affect regular eating
- loss of appetite
- fatigue that makes preparing or finishing meals difficult
- swallowing difficulties
- changes in your ability to shop or prepare food
- unintentional weight loss or reduced nutritional intake.
Where swallowing difficulties are present, we can work alongside your speech pathologist and other members of your healthcare team.
If texture-modified foods or thickened fluids have been recommended by your speech pathologist, our dietitians can help ensure these changes continue to provide adequate nutrition, variety and an enjoyable mealtime experience.
We may also work alongside occupational therapists, physiotherapists, GPs and other health professionals as part of your multidisciplinary care.
We Look Beyond What’s on Your Plate
Food choices don’t happen in isolation.
Your health and eating can be influenced by your medical conditions, medications, income, access to food, culture, family, work, disability, mental health, cooking facilities, energy levels, appetite, transport, food skills and many other factors.
We take these things into consideration when providing nutrition care.
Understanding the circumstances surrounding how you eat helps us recommend strategies that are realistic and relevant to you.
If an ideal nutrition recommendation doesn’t work within your current circumstances, we’ll work with you to find an approach that does.
Managing More Than One Chronic Health Condition
Many people live with more than one chronic health condition.
You might be managing diabetes alongside high cholesterol or cardiovascular disease. You may have gastrointestinal symptoms alongside another medical condition, or medications for one condition may be affecting your appetite or nutritional needs.
This can make nutrition advice confusing, particularly when recommendations for different conditions appear to compete with each other.
Our dietitians can help bring these different considerations together.
We’ll look at the whole picture, identify your most important nutrition priorities and develop an approach that considers your conditions together rather than treating each one in isolation.
This can be particularly valuable as part of coordinated chronic condition management with your GP and other health professionals.
Seeing a Dietitian Under a GP Chronic Condition Management Plan (GPCCMP)
If your GP believes you would benefit from a structured approach to managing your chronic health condition, they may prepare a GP Chronic Condition Management Plan, commonly referred to as a GPCCMP.
As part of your plan, your GP may refer you to eligible allied health professionals, including an Accredited Practising Dietitian.
Eligible patients can access Medicare rebates for up to five individual allied health services per calendar year. These services are shared across the eligible allied health professionals involved in your care.
Your GP will determine whether you are eligible for a GP Chronic Condition Management Plan and which allied health services are appropriate for you.
If you have been referred to an Optimum Intake dietitian under a GPCCMP, please provide your referral to our team so we can ensure the appropriate Medicare arrangements are in place.
Optimum Intake is not a bulk-billing dietitian service. An out-of-pocket cost applies to appointments.
Our Client Care Team can explain our appointment fees, Medicare rebates and referral requirements before you book.
You can also see one of our dietitians privately without a GP Chronic Condition Management Plan or GP referral.
