Chemo Cravings
This is a side effect one wouldn’t expect. You expect to feel sick and nauseous, with no appetite. A lot of people experience that, along with weightloss, so I was surprised to see “weight gain” listed as a possible side effect in the mass amount of literature the hospital gave me to read. Right after my first chemo session the cravings hit, and I understood why. Thankfully I haven’t experienced the weight gain side effect, but the cravings can be intense. I’d even say they’re worse than pregnancy cravings, and for worse foods, which is hard when you want to keep up a very health diet to help with treatments. If you’re experiencing chemo cravings, I promise you’re not alone.
I blocked out a lot of my mom’s treatment, but looking back I remember her craving sour foods along with foods she hadn’t eaten since childhood in Poland. Comfort foods. My dad and I visited many Polish shops during that time, and my uncle and aunt would often stop by with home cooked Polish food and things they bought for her from Polish deli. I remember going on a search for a specific kind of potato starch, as well as these potato rings that are sort of like super thick doughy noodles.
My cravings on the other hand are for carbs. Give me ALL the carbs! Since we know cancer cells feed on sugar, this is bad, bad, bad. Most of my cravings are things we don’t have in the house, like pizza, burritos, veggie burgers, and fries, so they’re easy to avoid. The other one is watermelon and cucumber, which I do eat pretty much everyday. If you know me well, this is actually kind of funny because for many years I’ve had severe food anxiety issues and none of these foods are on my “safe food” list. One positive side effect for me that started with years of therapy, improved during pregnancy, and has gotten better through all this testing, medication, treatment, and just evaluating life in general, has been that my food anxiety is so much better. My safe food list has gone from 3-10 foods depending on the day (I used to have panic attacks over eating a leaf of lettuce) to around 50 or 60. I’d take the food issues over cancer, of course, but this is one positive thing I can take away from this awful experience.
Cravings though.. why do they happen? One theory I have is that it has to do with another side effect of chemo. Since starting chemo, everything tastes like salt to me. Even water tastes like salty sewer water. It’s disgusting. With the salty taste, it sort of makes sense I’d crave sweet or carb heavy stuff. A google search tells me a lot of people crave spicy foods (due to not being able to taste much) and junk food, and weight gain is actually really common. I can’t seem to find much on the actual reason why aside from chemo changing your taste buds. It wreaks havoc on any mucous membranes, so it’s not nice to mouths. Now excuse me while I convince myself we do NOT need to order pizza for dinner.
I blocked out a lot of my mom’s treatment, but looking back I remember her craving sour foods along with foods she hadn’t eaten since childhood in Poland. Comfort foods. My dad and I visited many Polish shops during that time, and my uncle and aunt would often stop by with home cooked Polish food and things they bought for her from Polish deli. I remember going on a search for a specific kind of potato starch, as well as these potato rings that are sort of like super thick doughy noodles.
My cravings on the other hand are for carbs. Give me ALL the carbs! Since we know cancer cells feed on sugar, this is bad, bad, bad. Most of my cravings are things we don’t have in the house, like pizza, burritos, veggie burgers, and fries, so they’re easy to avoid. The other one is watermelon and cucumber, which I do eat pretty much everyday. If you know me well, this is actually kind of funny because for many years I’ve had severe food anxiety issues and none of these foods are on my “safe food” list. One positive side effect for me that started with years of therapy, improved during pregnancy, and has gotten better through all this testing, medication, treatment, and just evaluating life in general, has been that my food anxiety is so much better. My safe food list has gone from 3-10 foods depending on the day (I used to have panic attacks over eating a leaf of lettuce) to around 50 or 60. I’d take the food issues over cancer, of course, but this is one positive thing I can take away from this awful experience.
Cravings though.. why do they happen? One theory I have is that it has to do with another side effect of chemo. Since starting chemo, everything tastes like salt to me. Even water tastes like salty sewer water. It’s disgusting. With the salty taste, it sort of makes sense I’d crave sweet or carb heavy stuff. A google search tells me a lot of people crave spicy foods (due to not being able to taste much) and junk food, and weight gain is actually really common. I can’t seem to find much on the actual reason why aside from chemo changing your taste buds. It wreaks havoc on any mucous membranes, so it’s not nice to mouths. Now excuse me while I convince myself we do NOT need to order pizza for dinner.
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