Diet and exercise aid survival after breast cancer

Women who follow a healthy diet and are moderately active after being treated for breast cancer seem to live longer. Physical activity and a diet containing fruits and vegetables reduce the risk of dying to a great extent. A good diet or exercise alone doesn't have the same benefit. Several studies have shown that diet and exercise may each contribute to survival after breast cancer, but little research has been done to study the effect of both diet and exercise together. Researchers from the Moores UCSD Cancer Center, in La Jolla, California, studied the combined effects of diet and exercise in 1,490 women who had been treated for breast cancer 2 years earlier, on average. Overall, only 30 per cent of these women maintained the healthiest type of lifestyle, including eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily and engaging in physical activity equivalent to a half-hour of brisk walking six days a week. These women had a 44 per cent lower risk of dying within a 10-year period than the women who neither participated in any form of activity nor followed a healthy diet. The findings also suggest that the lower risk of death remained valid irrespective of the obesity in some women. The effect of physical activity and diet was so strong that it wiped out the body mass index effect. However, obese women were less likely than non-obese women to report such healthy habits. However, a reduced risk of death was not observed in non-physically active women who consumed the highest amounts of fruits and vegetables or among physically active women who did not eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. There was no benefit observed from each one alone, but there was a survival benefit with both together.