Hi Terry,
The beauty of juicing is that it provides easy and rapid absorption of both calories and nutrients, plus provides delicious taste experiences. This is important for someone who may not be eating well otherwise due to chemo. The downside of juicing is that you do not get the benefits of all the fruit and vegetable fiber. (This is a shame - fiber does a whole lot more than help keep our bowels regular. Much of the lignans and other cancer-fighting phyto-chemical components of fresh food is contained in the fibrous portion. Plus chewing fibrous food strengthens the teeth and gums, increases saliva production, works to satiate hunger, and helps to regulate gastric acid and bile production and release into the stomach and intestines.)
As for what you should or should not juice, there are some antioxidants, vitamins and/or trace minerals that may interfere with specific chemo drugs. If there are food interactions with the chemo you will be getting, hopefully the dr will be aware of them, so you should ask your oncologist if there are any foods you shouldn't eat
or supplements that you shouldn't take while you are getting the chemo,
and during recovery. Avoid those foods and/or supplements, and keep juicing/eating everything else. (Some of the literature I have read indicates that consumption of normal amounts of nutrients in food is not a big problem, even as concerns the specific nutrients that have been known to reduce effectiveness of drugs, whereas the increased amounts of supplements might be a problem. If juicing allows for a greatly increased intake of these certain nutrients, definitely avoid juicing those particular foods, but it may be ok to eat smaller quantities with meals.)
The other thing you can do, is find out specifically what drugs you will be getting - that should include steroids, etc - anything that is part of the chemo regimen. You can do an online search e.g. foods that are contraindicated or interact with such and such a drug. Something I do is to go into the manufacturer's web site, if I can find it. You usually can just enter the name of the drug in the search box, and look for the result that has the name of the drug in the URL. Also, many sites that talk about a specific drug will list the maker. On the maker's site, you can often find a copy of the package insert - the information that is distributed to drs and pharmacies with the drug. Any foods known to the drug company to alter the effectiveness of the drug should be listed on this insert. You may have to search the whole insert to find this info, and look through a lot of medical gobbelty-gook to find it, but in the meantime you will learn a lot about the drug that your dr/chemo nurses may not tell you.
THis message thread has interesting discussion on liquid diet during treatment: http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,34307
This is a wonderful web site http://www.easytoswallow.co.uk/index.htm
This article in the CC newsletter has juice recipes included: http://www.cancercompass.com/cancer-news/1,15449,00.htm
Best wishes,
Tre