HHS HealthBeat (October 25, 2007)

Surviving breast cancer

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Can healthy living help a breast cancer patient survive? Dr. John Pierce of the University of California, San Diego wanted to find out. He looked at data on women with early stage breast cancer.

Pierce says that women who took brisk 30-minute walks and who also ate five portions of fruits and vegetables a day added years to their lives. The 10-year death rate among women who did both was about one-half that of women who did neither – about 7 percent.  So he concludes:

``It’s not good enough to say, `I’ll do one and not the other.’ You’ve got to do both. And if you do both, then it clearly looks like you’ll be protecting yourself against future breast cancer events.’’  (10 seconds)

The study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May, 26 2008