For this week’s post I am choosing to write about the effects of chemotherapy on gustation. I am able to write a fair amount on this subject because my girlfriend underwent chemotherapy and radiation during her senior year of high school on path to ridding herself of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I didn’t know her until last year, and in the year since, have definitely noticed some strange eating habits of hers, but I had never really thought to connect the chemotherapy with her eating habits. For example, she LOVES limes, and other citrus fruits too, which fits in perfectly with the point that chemotherapy causes a sort of bitter taste, and patients try to overcome the bitter taste with sweet/sour things, like limes. She also loves to add salt to her food, which I assume also has something to do with her efforts to overpower her desensitized taste receptors.
Likewise, during her stint of chemotherapy, she developed an extreme aversion to pizza. This was because one day after chemo, her parents took her and some friends to get pizza, and as was pointed out in class, you’re not supposed to eat for a couple hours before and after chemo. She took one bite of pizza and said like she felt like throwing it up right away. Her dislike for pizza continued until about a year after her chemotherapy ended! Now she can eat it just fine…in fact, we just had some for lunch! I find her taste peculiarities very curious, and it’s very interesting to watch her eating habits. One thing I’ve noticed is that her umami taste receptors seem like they weren’t damaged, because she loves sushi and we go to sushi bars all the time. It’s very interesting that her other taste receptors would have been desensitized due to the chemotherapy, but that her umami receptors remained mostly intact.
