Turkey Tail mushroom

Hi Lucretia, I didn’t take any supplements or vitamins etc during chemo. You never know how much it interacts with the absorption or the drugs or causes problems. The only vitamin my oncologist recommended was vitamin d as my levels were low. To help my nails I used something called polybalm which was recommended to use during chemo. I used it on both finger nails and toe nails. You get two tubes so as not to cross contaminate. It is a bit expensive but it worked and I never had problems with my nails during chemo. I also used Aveeno moisturiser for hands too. 
Hugs from cuffcake x x x x x 

There probably are people who did. It’s supposed to be good for HER2 positive. Eating mushrooms is generally helpful for health - so many nutritional benefits, even from the common button mushroom. You could look at other support groups and websites - try Penny Brohn, cancer active, yes to life and see if someone there can help or advise. 

I like doing things that I could find evidence for like fasting around chemo, exercise including weights, good glucose control, good healthy diet from basic ingredients, learning to relax and deal better with stress and anxiety and so on. 

wishing you all the best for your chemo and hope you can find the answers you need to guide you 

Hi Lucretia,  I would only take what is recommended by your oncologist and leave the turkey tail supplements alone. Chemo needs to be absorbed and you don’t want to do anything that could disrupt the absorption.

Take care and good luck with everything.

Barbara

hi, had a quick read up on turkey tails on healthline website, says the benefits are geared more toward colorectal cancers as it is gut improving, like others i would wait to add anything until you are done. 

especially as its not considered beneficial for bc

Hi 

I read up about Turkey tail for TNBC it was recommended by a lady who had it over 20 yrs ago !! It helps the immune system anti inflammatory , bowel cancers , etc.. I have bought some but I have finished my chemo , waiting for radio it does say it enhances the effects of both chemo and radio ?.I won’t take it till after I have finished treatment .

Hi Zephyr

Did you fast over chemo? I’m reading research about the fast mimicking diet and interested in doing it. My chemo starts next week. I’m triple + breast cancer 

I did do a fast mimicking diet around chemo. So I ate 600-800 calories a day from 48 hours before until 24 hours after my infusion finished. Some say it can stop 12 hours after the infusion. There’s a bit of guidance on canceractive website. You can buy de longo kits but they are ridiculously expensive. I think fasting is doable if your chemo frequency is every 2 weeks or so but on weekly paclitaxel would be tricky. I found it helpful to delay my first meal until nearly midday and then have four or five 100-150 kcal meals. Eg a small avocado is 150kcal. Or broccoli soup. Sometimes I had treats like prawns as also low calorie I found having special foods for fasting made it really manageable. 

Thank you for your reply. This is very helpful. How were your SE? Don’t think it helped? 

*Do you think it helped?

I think it definitely helped. I had almost no nausea and any side effects were mild. I think I should have reduced my dose of EC as I had brain fog that meant I couldn’t concentrate to cook. But yes, it did help, and probably meant I didn’t gain weight on chemo. I probably didn’t need the steroids to reduce sickness with EC, though I would only have not taken them after discussing it with my team. I fasted around chemo because there was some evidence in the medical literature suggesting it makes chemo more effective in TNBC. I hoped that might be true for other types of breast cancer.