A new study from the American Cancer Society finds cancer survivors who follow health behavior recommendations - avoiding tobacco, eating more fruits and vegetables, and getting adequate exercise-have higher health-related quality of life (HRQoL) scores than those who do not follow such recommendations.
The study, which appears in the May issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, also finds cancer survivors have low rates of smoking, but few are meeting physical activity recommendations or meeting the "5-A-Day" fruit and vegetable consumption recommendation, suggesting a cancer diagnosis may change smoking behavior but have little impact on exercise and healthy eating.
Researchers led by Kevin Stein, PhD, 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. The analysis revealed that eight out of ten survivors were not meeting the 5-A-Day recommendation (range 80.0 to 85.2 percent). Up to seven out of ten were not meeting recommendations for physical activity (range 52.7 percent to 70.4 percent). Meanwhile, survivors were more likely to be non-smokers than those without a history of cancer (range 82.6 to 91.6 percent). Only about one in 20 survivors was meeting all three lifestyle behavior recommendations (range 3.6 to 5.8 percent).