More than 80 percent of local cancer patients regularly take dietary supplements in the hope of increasing their chances of recovery, but a survey found that some turn to such products in place of cancer medications, the Hope Foundation for Cancer Care said yesterday.
The survey, conducted between Sept. 5 and Oct. 24 last year, found that 82.1 percent of respondents use nutritional supplements, taking an average of 4.3 kinds of supplement, the foundation said.
Seven percent of respondents reported taking at least 10 dietary supplements, the foundation said.
“The poll shows that the number or types of supplements a patient takes is directly proportional to the severity of his or her illness, as evidenced by the fact patients with stage-four cancers take approximately five kinds of nutritional supplements, compared with an average of 3.5 among individuals with stage-one cancer,” foundation chairman Wang Cheng-hsu (王正旭) told a press conference in Taipei.
Wang, who is director of the Keelung Chang Gung Cancer Center, said the most common dietary supplements among cancer patients are nutritional drinks, followed by vitamins and glutamine.
About 35 percent of respondents said they take nutritional supplements to strengthen their immune system, while 31 percent used such products to increase their physical strength and 20.4 percent to assuage the side effects of cancer treatments.
While 4.9 percent of respondents said they believed dietary supplements could help prevent a recurrence of their cancer, 1.2 percent thought such products could cure cancer, Wang said.
“More alarming is that 37 percent chose not to inform their physicians about the nutritional supplements they are taking, because they thought the doctors might not fully understand the efficacy of their supplements [31.9 percent], the doctors did not need to know [27.7] or the doctors might talk them out of taking the products [14.9],” Wang said.
Chen Chao-tzu (陳昭姿), director of the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center’s Center for Advancement of Nursing Education, said many people think that since dietary supplements are categorized as food, they are harmless and free of side effects.
“Such products still have side effects, but it may take longer for them to manifest themselves. Some dietary supplements might interact with cancer drugs, or even affect chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatments,” Chen said.
The survey collected 375 valid samples. The majority, or 45.1 percent, of the respondents had breast cancer, followed by lymphoma, colorectal cancer, ovarian cancer and lung cancer.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai