Women battling breast cancer can halve their risk of dying from the disease if they eat fruit and take up walking, a US study has found.
But researchers said both parts of the strategy must be followed - eating fruit and vegetables without walking or walking without eating fruit has no effect, they said.
A total of 1,500 women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer between 1991 and 2000 were observed as part of the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which is the first to examine the combination of exercise and diet and its effect on survival.
Previous studies have looked at one or the other and came up with mixed results.
Researchers at the Moore's Cancer Centre, University of California, who conducted the study, said getting diet and exercise right is key for breast cancer patients. “We demonstrate in this study of breast cancer survivors that, even if a woman is overweight, if she eats at least five servings of vegetables and fruits a day and walks briskly for 30 minutes, six days a week, her risk of death goes down by 50 per cent. The key is that you must do both,” said John Pierce, director of the cancer control programme at the Moore's centre.
The death rate during the five to 11 years for which the women were followed up was seven per cent among those who led a healthy lifestyle, half that of those who did not.
A further study will attempt to change the diet and level of physical activity of breast cancer survivors to see if the findings from this first observational study are borne out.
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