May 8, 2018 – Diet and Cancer Survival

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Anchor lead: Can eating a Mediterranean-type diet improve cancer survival? Elizabeth Tracey reports

People with colon cancer who had been treated for their cancer and who consumed a healthy diet, were physically active and practiced other healthful behaviors lived longer without a cancer recurrence than those who did not, a recent study found. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, describes the study.

Nelson: Their questionnaire sampled tendencies for what people ate, habits vis a vis exercise and their weight and body mass index. They generated a score as to how concordant these lifestyle features were with the American Cancer Society guidelines for a healthy lifestyle and if you were very concordant with that 85% of those folks were alive and free of disease at five years. If you were poorly concordant with it 76% were alive and free of disease at five years.   :33

Nelson says this study did not account for how healthfully people lived before their cancer diagnosis, and says the definitive answer will emerge with prospective trials, currently underway. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.