What are the impacts of wellness practices on cancer care outcomes? Experts Dr. Amy Comander from Massachusetts General Hospital and Nicole Normandin Rueda, LMSW from PEN discuss the field of lifestyle medicine, the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, research results, and wellness resources for cancer patients.
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Lisa Hatfield:
How do wellness practices impact cancer care outcomes? I’m getting to the bottom of it in this RESTORE Program. Dr. Comander, you have a strong interest in cancer survivorship, lifestyle medicine, and improving outcomes of patients facing cancer. Can you speak to the impact of wellness practices on cancer treatment outcomes and what are we learning?
Dr. Amy Comander:
So I’ve gotten very interested in the field of lifestyle medicine over the past few years. And I think it’s really important to define what that is to those who are just learning about that term for the first time. So lifestyle medicine refers to the therapeutic use of evidence-based lifestyle interventions to prevent and treat chronic diseases. In addition, those who are trained in lifestyle medicine work to empower the patient to adopt these tools and make effective behavior changes.
The six pillars of lifestyle medicine include physical activity, attention to diet, social connection, avoidance of risky substances, stress management, and adequate sleep. These are so important for the care of our patients with cancer from the time of diagnosis and beyond. And at our hospital we’ve developed a program where we provide individualized consultations to counsel our patients on each of these pillars to help them optimize their health and well-being, and in many cases, outcome from cancer. There are emerging studies demonstrating the important role of these lifestyle behaviors for improving outcome for our patients.
As a breast oncologist, I can tell you that there are significant studies demonstrating that individuals with a diagnosis of breast cancer who are able to exercise, whether that’s during treatment or after completion of primary treatment, actually have a lower risk of recurrence and improved outcome from their breast cancer. This is very powerful data, and we’re actually seeing this in other cancer types as well. So it’s very important that we in the oncology field provide our patients with these tools so they can engage in these six pillars of lifestyle medicine to improve their health and well-being.
Lisa Hatfield:
Okay, thank you for that. One quick follow-up question, and then I have a question for Nicole. So if a patient does not have a lifestyle medicine specialist, I guess that’s how I think of you, who, what is the resource, like at a local community center, could they ask the social worker there to help me out with these additional aspects of my cancer treatment? Who would they go to for those questions?
Dr. Amy Comander:
Such an excellent question, and I know I’m fortunate that we have this wonderful program that we started. I would say that in terms of exercise, if you have access to a YMCA, many YMCAs have a program called the LIVESTRONG Program, which is a free exercise program for cancer survivors, and many individuals take advantage of that, and that’s a great resource. If you can’t access a YMCA, thankfully, due to technology like this, we now have the opportunity to offer all kinds of exercise programs on YouTube or through an entity called the Maple Tree Cancer Alliance. There’s so many options potentially available online for somebody who wants to take on an exercise program. I’ll pick another important pillar of lifestyle medicine, nutrition.
One, we know there’s so much information out there on the internet, but one organization that does a very good job on conveying important evidence-based nutrition information is the American Institute of Cancer Research, AICR. So I often refer my patients to that site where they can read articles about nutrition, check out recipes, and, again, it’s very evidence-based and based on research that I trust, and so I think that’s a great resource for individuals who might not have access to an oncology-registered dietician at their hospital.
Lisa Hatfield:
Okay, thank you. And Nicole, are there specific wellness practices that have been shown to improve treatment outcomes for patients facing a cancer diagnosis?
Nicole Normandin Rueda:
Yeah, absolutely. So research has shown that adopting certain wellness practices can significantly improve your quality of life and potentially enhance treatment outcomes. Patients that have physical activity, and what that looks like is different for every patient. So regular exercise can mean a lot of different things. At the end of the day, from my perspective, the importance is that you’re moving your body. So if you start with just stretching, yoga, things to get your body start to start moving, it’s better than absolutely nothing, and then you work your way up to as much as you can endure. That’s key, I think, just like Dr. Comander just said.
Second, we have nutrition. So the balanced diet is difficult for everybody, but whenever it comes to a cancer diagnosis, you really want to take into consideration whatever your doctor’s recommending, and that’s specific to your treatment potentially. But as well as just making sure that you are nourishing your body, getting enough water, staying hydrated, all of the basics.
Next, I know that mindfulness and stress reduction techniques are huge. These practices, including like meditation, yoga, just deep breathing exercises to help kind of reduce that stress level, improve your overall clarity and mental health is really important. We want patients to stay as cool, calm, and collected as they can be. And so even just taking some deep breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth, these things are critical. And then I think another big one is the psychological side of things.
So psychosocial is one of those words that doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people, but to those of us who are trained, we understand that psychosocial means everything around you, everything that interacts with you is impacted by this cancer diagnosis. So we want to make sure we are connecting patients with all of the support groups that we can possibly think of. If that’s what they’re looking for. We also want to take into consideration the cultural situation. So if that means that you really don’t want to sit in a room with others, but you want to just read a blog from somebody like an empowerment lead or something like that, that can also be helpful.
And that is what patients are looking for now is easy access to information that is evidence-based, of course, but also that is just testimonial, somebody that’s been there and can guide them through what it’s like to, yeah, it is okay to talk to others, and it is okay to ask for help when you need it. So we really want to encourage that as much as possible. And obviously we want to foster a sense of community. We want everybody to understand you’re not alone. And there’s organizations out there doing fantastic things. Patient Empowerment Network is one of them, but there’s also so many others that are just doing fantastic things to support patients in every aspect of their cancer diagnosis.
Lisa Hatfield:
Thank you, Nicole. You heard it here directly from the experts. Thanks for joining this RESTORE Program. I’m your host, Lisa Hatfield.
