Tuberculosis dietary taboos

It is absolutely forbidden to eat foods that increase the burden on the liver and conflict with anti-tuberculosis drugs. Strictly control the intake of foods that may irritate the respiratory tract and increase the burden on the gastrointestinal tract. The remaining controversial "fatty" foods can be flexibly adjusted according to one's own tolerance. There is no one-size-fits-all absolute taboo list.

When I was doing follow-up work in the tuberculosis department two years ago, I met a 19-year-old sophomore boy who was diagnosed with secondary pulmonary tuberculosis. After taking medicine for half a month, the sputum test was close to turning negative, and the transaminase was completely normal. As a result, he secretly went out on the weekend and drank three bottles of cold beer with his classmates. The reason why alcohol is placed at the top of the list of absolute taboos is because first-line anti-tuberculosis drugs such as rifampicin and isoniazid are themselves hepatotoxic. Alcohol is a clear factor in liver damage. When the two are superimposed, the probability of liver problems will increase several times. In addition, it is best not to touch sashimi, soft-boiled eggs, and undercooked meat at all. Tuberculosis patients have lower immunity than ordinary people and are easily infected by parasites and salmonella in food. Once infection and fever are caused, it will stimulate the activity of tuberculosis lesions, which is not worth the loss. There are also those "recipes for treating tuberculosis" spread online, such as Sanqi soaked in wine, Polygonum multiflorum and steamed eggs. Most of them have clear hepatotoxicity and should not be touched.

Except for these minefields that must not be touched, most of the rest are foods that need to be controlled in quantity, and there is no need to kill them all at once. Many people say that people with tuberculosis should not eat spicy food. The patients I met in Chongqing and Hunan, if they were told to completely give up spicy food, they would not even be able to eat. Instead, they would not consume enough protein and their recovery would be slower. In fact, as long as it’s not so spicy that it burns your stomach or makes you cough violently, it’s totally fine to eat some mildly spicy dishes to start your appetite occasionally. There used to be a girl from Hunan who could eat two bowls of rice every day by eating slightly spicy stir-fried pork. During the three-month review, the lesions were absorbed faster than those of patients who completely avoided spicy food during the same period. But try to avoid things like spicy hot pot, full-sugar milk tea, and fried chicken as much as possible. High sugar will make the phlegm thicker and make coughing more uncomfortable. Eating too much oily food will not be easy to digest. Instead, it will occupy your stomach and prevent you from eating more nutritious high-quality protein. There is also the rumor that "you cannot eat spinach with tuberculosis". In fact, spinach contains high oxalic acid content, which can easily combine with calcium to form stones. If you blanch it in boiling water for 1 minute before eating, 80% of the oxalic acid can be removed. It is completely fine to eat it normally, and it can supplement folic acid and vitamins. I met an aunt before. She heard from her neighbor that you should not eat spinach due to tuberculosis. She didn’t touch her favorite spinach among green leafy vegetables for half a year. During the reexamination, her blood calcium was low. The doctor didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He said that you can just blanch it in water and eat it. There is no need to pay so much attention to it. Oh, by the way, patients who take isoniazid should pay attention to eating less cured bacon, sausages, and salted fish. The histamine content in them is high. If it reacts with isoniazid, it is easy to cause allergic reactions such as rash, blushing, and headache. If you really want to eat it, just take a bite or two, don't eat it all.

There are also a lot of taboos on "fading things" that everyone is arguing about. In fact, there is no unified standard answer. It all depends on individual circumstances. Take seafood for example. Western medicine guidelines never say that seafood cannot be eaten for tuberculosis. Instead, it is recommended to eat more high-quality protein such as fish and shrimp to supplement nutrition. However, according to the views of many traditional Chinese medicine doctors, seafood is a trigger and may aggravate coughs and allergies. I usually tell patients that if you eat seafood, you will easily get rashes and cough badly, so don’t do it. If you are fine eating seafood all the time, then steaming shrimps or boiling crucian carp soup will provide you with more nutrients than eating fatty meat. There are also strong tea and coffee. Some doctors say that tuberculosis requires a good rest and it is best not to drink these if they affect sleep. However, many office workers cannot go to work without a cup of coffee in the morning. As long as you do not suffer from insomnia or panic after drinking it, it is perfectly fine to drink a cup of light coffee or tea in the morning. You don’t have to suffer from sleepiness.

In fact, I have been following up on tuberculosis for so many years, and I have found that many patients have fallen into a misunderstanding: they focus on what they cannot eat every day, and they are afraid of this and avoid that. In the end, they are unable to eat, and they are so thin that only bones are left, and their recovery is extremely slow. Tuberculosis itself is a wasting disease. The most important thing is to eat enough nutrition. Two eggs, a cup of milk, and two taels of lean meat every day are much more important than worrying about whether you can eat a bite of spinach or a bite of shrimp.

To put it bluntly, dietary taboos are never a shackles for you, they just help you avoid pitfalls that may slow down your recovery. As long as you don’t hit the minefield of liver damage, you can make the rest of your life comfortable. If you eat happily and have enough nutrition, you will recover quickly.