Since I was diagnosed (especially after the breast cancer diagnosis two weeks after the tongue cancer diagnosis) I have been paying lots of attention to eating well--fresh veggies and juices and soy protein and am taking all the supplements, blue-green algea, FLAX oil, quarts of green tea, etc. too.

Before each surgery I had , I stopped the supplements that could thin the blood (Most of the ones thought to have antioxidant properties) for about 5 days because the pre-admissions folks at the hosptial said to do so. As soon as the surgeries were over, I started up again.

Friday, I asked he medical oncologist's nurse about taking supplements during chemo/rad and she said to stop taking everything but a good multivitamin. She said that in theory, almost all that other stuff is thought to work by slowing down the growth of cancer cells and thus giving your immune system more time to kill them.

But she pointed out that both chemo and radiation work *because* cancer cells grow faster than regular cells and so you don't want to do anything that would reduce that difference in growth (cancer vs. healthy cells) during chemo and radiation treatment.

So OK, that made sense ot me and I definitely want this hellish treatment to *work*. I just ordered a rather expensive oreder of 18 different kinds of supplements and now they're going to have to wait until raidation and chemo are over for a few weeks.

I realize many health professionals are just blindly dismissive of the idea of any kind of nutritional intervention being effective but she actually wasn't. She said it was a good idea to do lots of fresh juices and all the supplements and green tea etc. AFTER treatment ends.