For years, AICR has written about the growing body of evidence showing that the same lifestyle choices found to reduce the risk of developing cancer – a healthy diet, a healthy weight and physical activity –can also help survivors live longer and healthier. Research is 
still growing but last week, the evidence became even clearer when the American Cancer Society released new guidelines for survivors.
The ACS guidelines advise survivors to exercise, eat healthy, and maintain a healthy weight. The expert panelists who evaluated the evidence concluded that following these recommendations can lower the risk of the cancer recurring and improve the chances of disease-free survival.
The updated guidelines for survivors were published last week in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. You can read the complete guidelines here.
We asked Elisa Bandera, MD, PhD, one of the expert panelists, to help explain the recommendations. Bandera, a nutritional epidemiologist at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, is also a member of the expert panel on AICR’s Continuous Update Project
Q: Can you give a sense of how much research there is on diet, weight, and exercise related to survivorship, and how recent it is?
A: Surprisingly, not much research has been done in this area, compared to the literature on nutrition and physical activity and cancer risk. Currently, most of the evidence comes from studies on breast cancer. However, this is an area that is growing exponentially and several ongoing studies are going to be producing more results in the near future.
