Eat well
Eating well can be a wonderful way to nourish and care for both your body and your mind when living with cancer. However, we know that cancer and cancer treatments can pose additional challenges when it comes to food and nutrition.
When you see this icon across our website, you know that the support on offer helps you to eat well.
At Penny Brohn UK, we have a range of nutrition services and resources so that everyone can have the personalised support they need to help them eat well.
How eating well can help when living with cancer
Nutritious food can support your physical and emotional wellbeing, helping you live well, and do more of what’s important to you. Simple approaches to nutrition can improve your quality of life at every stage of living with cancer, whatever your individual priorities are right now:
Eating healthily gives you protective nutrients to help support and repair your all body systems that may be impacted by cancer itself, or cancer treatments.
A balanced diet can help support your strength and energy levels.
Your immune system needs essential nutrients to work at its best, which is particularly important when living with cancer and recovering from treatment.
Personalised nutritional support is one way to help manage cancer symptoms and treatment side effects, including constipation, diarrhoea, nausea, taste changes, fatigue and menopause symptoms.
The more nourished your body and mind are, the more resilient they will be through cancer treatments, helping how you tolerate and adhere to treatment, and giving you the best chance of improved outcomes.
Positive nutrition
We understand that getting started with diet and nutrition after a cancer diagnosis is not always straightforward. Making sense of all the information and misinformation out there on nutrition may be overwhelming. It can be confusing when different articles, news stories and books, appear to offer conflicting advice. It is also completely understandable to feel you need to strive for the “perfect” diet, often heightened when living with cancer and wanting to do the best for your health. Trying to not put a foot wrong with what you eat can create fear around certain foods, or anxiety around eating in general. This can be an additional form of stress that you just don’t need and can get in the way of getting started with eating well.
Our positive nutrition approach focuses on:
- Positive nutrition – ways of eating that reduce stress and fear, increase satisfaction or comfort, and encourage the joy that comes with sharing food with families and friends too.
- Flexible and feasible nutrition – there’s no one size fits all to eating well; the best diet for you is the one that you find sustainable and enjoyable. We can help you find ways of eating adapted to your symptoms, headspace, culture, preferences, lifestyle, and budget. Nutrition that works for you, not against you, long-term.
- Evidence-based and effective nutrition – we stay on top of the latest and best quality information and evidence to take the hard work off you. Our nutrition services and resources can give you the confidence and clarity to focus on simple but effective changes, rather than unnecessarily complex diets. Ensuring you have nutritional support that is safe for your diagnosis and treatment is our priority.
Penny Brohn UK’s range of eating well services and resources can help you find a positive approach to nutrition, at your own pace, to fit your own needs.
More support to help you eat well
In person: Food and move days
Join us for a rejuvenating wellbeing day at our beautiful centre near Bristol, focusing on eating and moving well.
In person: Retreats
Our retreat programme always includes delicious, healthy meals and snacks, alongside practical sessions to have some fun with good food.
One-to-one support
If you need additional support in putting our recommendations into practice or require help with safe adaptations for your specific needs, we offer a limited amount of one-to-one sessions with our nutritionist or nutritional therapists.
If you would like to speak to one of our team to understand what support is best for you right now, our Client Support Team is here for you Mondays to Fridays 10am – 4pm with support and guidance: clientsupport@pennybrohn.org.uk, 0303 3000 118.
Resources
Penny Brohn UK resources:
Other recommended resources:
Over the next few months, we will be developing more services focused specifically on addressing the most important cancer-related concerns. If you would like to keep up to date with new support we can offer we recommend signing up for our weekly email newsletter.