Cancer Survivors can Improve Quality of Life by Following Healthy Habits

Cancer survivors who follow healthy behavior recommendations like eating fruits and avoiding tobacco and alcohol have a better quality of life than those who do not follow these recommendations, researchers from the American Cancer Society have found.

They also found that cancer survivors have low rates of smoking, however, few are meeting physical activity recommendations or meeting the '5-A-Day' fruit and vegetable consumption recommendation, suggesting a cancer diagnosis might change smoking behaviour but have little impact on exercise and healthy eating.

Led by Kevin Stein, PhD, the research team used data from more than 9,000 survivors participating in the American Cancer Society's Study of Cancer Survivors-II (SCS II), a national cross-sectional study of HRQoL among cancer survivors identified through population-based cancer registries.

They found that eight out of ten survivors were not meeting the 5-A-Day recommendations and up to seven out of ten were not meeting recommendations for physical activity.

Researchers also found that survivors were more likely to be non-smokers than those without a history of cancer.

And only about one in 20 survivors was meeting all three lifestyle behaviour recommendations.

Besides this, researchers found higher HRQoL in survivors who were meeting each lifestyle behaviour recommendation, with the strongest associations emerging for physical activity.

And they found that the more lifestyle behaviours cancer survivors met, the higher their HRQoL score, regardless of the type of cancer.

"It is concerning that up to 12.5 percent of cancer survivors are not meeting any lifestyle behaviour recommendation and less than 10 percent on average across the cancer groups are meeting two or more recommendations," Dr. Stein said.

"What is particularly noteworthy is that following lifestyle behaviour recommendations not only can have a positive impact on physical health outcomes, but also have the added benefit of having a positive impact on quality of life.

"We also found that the relationship between compliance with recommendations and quality of life is cumulative. That is, that the more recommended health behaviours survivors engage in (e.g. eating better, being active, not smoking), the more powerful the impact on their quality of life," he added.

The study appears in the May issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Source-ANI
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