Our recent talk by Professor Robert Thomas, gave us an interesting insight into the connections between cancer nutrition and lifestyle, http://tinyurl.com/22errhfv. This talk was part of our 'Let's Talk About Cancer' sessions for patients and the public.
Prof Thomas is an oncologist working on breast cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer and bowel cancer, and runs a research unit that looks at the evidence base for lifestyle strategies to improve wellbeing for individuals living with and beyond cancer.
Prof Thomas talked about how the number of people living with and beyond cancer has increased significantly. People are living longer but there has also been an increase in people living with chronic conditions following diagnosis - so ensuring people have the best possible quality of life following treatment is really important.
Exercise is seen as one of the most important interventions after cancer treatment, reducing the risk of cancer returning and reducing the impact of ‘late effects of treatment’ that can frequently arise subsequent to completing anti-cancer treatments. Prof Thomas also talked about how some private hospitals are even encouraging radiotherapy patients to undertake exercise sessions prior to their radiotherapy.
The overall benefits of exercise to people recovering from cancer treatment can include less depression and anxiety, less fatigue, improvement in muscle power and better quality of life.
Exercise should also be targeted to the individual's needs, for instance cardiovascular exercises such as walking and swimming can be used for weight reduction, yoga for easing stress and weights and resistance training for bone health and muscle power.
Prof Thomas talked about the importance of nutrition and gut health, with better gut health being linked to an improved response to immunotherapies as well as being linked to better vitamin D absorption. In contrast poor gut health can be linked to low mood, poor cognition, dementia and many more ill health conditions.
If you missed out on the nutrition and lifestyle talk or if you would like to listen to what was said in full, you can catch up on it here, and if you'd like to find out more about Prof Thomas' work check it out here:
Our next talk (for patients, public and professionals), on cancer screening programmes, is at the end of January: Tuesday 30th Jan, 6.30-7.30pm. Email england.eoecancerallianceteam@nhs.net to register.