My name is Vernon and I have tongue cancer. It is at the base of my tongue and has moved into my lymph nodes in jaw. I am on week three of chemo and radiation. Things have gone as well as can be expected. I am starting to lose my taste for food. Any good ideas? I am very happy this was found early.

Welcome to OCF, Vernon! Sorry you are dealing with oral cancer but Im glad you found our forum. We will help you get thru the nest few months.

Here is a list of foods that have a smoother texture and are less spicy. They should be easier for you to eat during and after your treatments.

List of Easy to East Foods.

I cant stress enough how important your intake is. Its the one thing you can control. It is also what will determine how hard this journey is for you. Every single day from today thru at least the first year after you finish rads you need to hit these minimums. EVER SINGLE DAY! No skimping one day thinking you can make it up the next as that quickly turns into a cycle of playing "catch up", which never happens. Every day even if you have to push yourself, take in at least 2500 calories and 48-60 oz of water. Water is especially important with getting chemo to flush it from your body to avoid kidney damage. The day before, on chemo day and the day after push your water intake a little higher. I know the hospital gives you fluids with chemo but the extra water is still a good idea. You can also get a prescription from your doc for hydration in the chemo lab a few times a week. This helps you to feel much better.

Hang in there, this battle can be a rough one but we are in your corner and will help you every step of the way.

Welcome Vernon,

Unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done in regards to taste until after treatment, and you begin recovering. That could be in phases. I say at 3 months, 6 months, a year and two years, I noticed significant changes in taste, eating ability, and it progressively improved, but I still have some altered taste, but work around it, and can say I can taste most everything since I avoid those I don't, like sweet, can't chew or swallow. I assume you are having Chemoradiation, both which kill fast acting cells like your taste buds, and nerve invertation to transmit taste signals to the brain, and the nausea, certain smells, taste can be off putting from treatment. I used canned nutrition during my treatments to avoid some issues, so maybe that helped. A number of factors that may lessen the severity of taste loss are taken into account, and there are some proactive, reactive measures that can help.

It depends on the amount, and location of radiation, and the type, amount of chrmo, and assume you are having Cisplstin, If the salivary glands are spared or have reduced radiation, and if being radiated on one or both sides of the head and neck that one side of the salivary glands still produce saliva, which is also integral in taste.

Keeping the mouth clean, well hydrated will help improve taste, brushing the tongue, treating any mucocitis, which is likely to occurr, and thrush, a fungal infection, can cause bad taste in the mouth. Avoiding foods that are too hot, taste better, and not to cause injury, as well as spicy, sharp textured, and acidic foods. The typical rinse of salt water, baking soda will help, and my last treatment I used NeutraSal, a prescription powder rinse you mix with water to help with mucocitis and dry mouth. I also had my mouth sprayed daily at the radiation center to get any gunk out, and both improved my taste, helped with mucocitis, and controlling thrush after I had to use a Nyststin swish and swallow rinse.

Improved saliva will help with taste by chewing gum, drinking water, milk replicates saliva, sugar increases saliva, but then there is the cavity issue. Drinking lemon water, smelling lemons, hard citric candy produce saliva, as well as OTC, and prescription medications to improve saliva.

Fat increases taste, and with sugar, you want to eat more, and is why it's in most junk food, and also canned nutrition.

Zinc may help with taste, but right now, it may be irritable to your tongue, so ask your doctor.

Even with all this, I didn't even try many of these, and just did my time knowing I would have taste again, which took time. I would order like 10 dishes to see what I could eat, go to a buffet, which saves money too instead of cooking and wasting it.

Another thing, taste involves more than just eating. It involves seeing, smelling. hearing, texture, and memory, besides taste which include 6 tastes, not 4, to include salt, sweet, sour, bitter, umami, and mouth feel, from fat. Use all these when ready to improve your taste.

I hope this helps, and good luck.

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Thank you very much!!!!

Welcome aboard Vernon. As Christine said, food and water intake are crucial to getting through this. And this forum is a huge help as well. Do you have a feeding tube? Some make it through without but I don't think I could have. Good luck to you.

Hi Vernon - welcome to the family. Several times it was mentioned above to maintain your food and liquid intake. While we are/were all told this at the beginning of our journey one important factor is often unknown until it's too late, and that is why is food intake so important.

There's two things going on here, 1. cancer and the treatments for it are hyper-metabolic. That means that the disease and the treatment are high calorie consumers. It's like the pregnant woman who is eating for two; well you are eating for three. After the disease and the treatment get their daily portion if there is anything left, that's what you get, so you literally have to double (maybe even triple) your daily intake.

2. With the loss of taste that we all go through, the loss of appetite also comes. You just don't have any desire to eat. Imagine how devastating that can be to your health, to not eat and then the little bit that you do eat to be consumed by the disease and treatment. It doesn't get said a lot around here, but it's easy to become malnourished to the point of requiring hospitalization.

I'm one of those people who think it's important for people to know the why of what we're doing, not just the what. To me it just makes everything more understandable to know why.

I managed to choke down usually 3/4 of what I needed on a daily basis throughout treatment. Still I lost 44 pounds overall. Now, I was a plump little dumpling before treatment began, so I had some extra to be able to lose. If you started out skinny like a bean pole, it will be super important for you to eat during treatment.

Hang in there and welcome to the family. We will help you get through this.

Tony

Hi welcome you've gotten lots of great advice. hugs.

Thank you very much! Everything just tastes like metal right now. The lemon water works well and mixed frozen vegys still taste ok. Someone offered the use of aloe juice as a rinse. It tastes bad but seem to keep the soreness down. Still searching!!! Blessed to have a chance!!

Thanks!!!! Week 3 chemo/ radiation. Vernon