One of the reasons that the number of cancer suffers has increased is the fact that more people undergo routine screening and early detection has increased the number of sufferers. Health care workers estimate that the USA has ten million cancer sufferers, which represents a figure between three and four percent of the population.

However, it does not alter the fact that cancer survivors have a higher risk for developing serious conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis as well as secondary cancers. As a general rule, physical exercise, eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and reducing a fat and sugar intake will offer significant protection against most serious conditions. Interestingly recent research has indicated that increasing the amount of exercise reduce the risk of secondary breast cancers.

Yet the truth is that most cancer patients do not significantly alter their lifestyle after being cured. Most of the breast cancer risk factors described is related to a womans exposure to estrogen including early menstruation, late menopause which increases the total amount of monthly cycles. Risks are reduced when a woman has an early first birth and an early menopause.

In 2005 by Holmes MD, Chen WY, Feskanich D, Kroenke CH, Colditz GA studied 2987 women diagnosed with stage I, II or III breast cancer they found that an increase in physical activities reduced the amount of deaths from cancer. The most improvement was found in those women that walked for between three and five hours a week. The research indicated that the combination of consuming at least 5 servings of fresh vegetables or fruits and increasing their physical activity to at least half an hour a day for 6 days a week increased the number of women who survived estrogen positive receptor tumors. However other studies have not reported a difference.

In women with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, studies have shown a positive link between treatment failure and high intakes of fat both saturated fat and polyunsaturated fat. The fresh start trial studied newly diagnosed breast and prostate cancer patients and it found that directly mailing patients to encourage a healthy lifestyle including eating less fat, more fruit and vegetables than other conventional methods. Although this is in tune with psychological cognitive behavioural patterns it needs more research to observe results (Demark-Wahnefried W, Clipp EC, Lipkus IM et al (2007). More research is needed because it would indicate the fact that newly diagnosed cancer patients have sufficient fear to make meaningful changes in their way of life it is no means certain that all health care staff promote such changes.

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