Three Steps Towards a Healthier “Quality of Life”

Back in 2006, the American Cancer Society issued three recommendations on healthy lifestyle behaviors:

• Get at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-strenuous exercise, or an hour of strenuous physical activity, every week
• eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily
• quit smoking.

But research done in the U.S. and Australia has shown that many cancer survivors do not follow these recommendations. (Source: Reuters)

Specifically:

“Just 5 percent of U.S. cancer survivors are meeting experts’ recommendations on diet, physical activity and cigarette smoking, a new survey shows.”

I continued reading the release to discover that:

“among breast, prostate, colorectal, bladder, uterine and melanoma survivors — all of the cancer types the researchers looked at — health-related quality of life rose steadily with the number of lifestyle recommendations met.”

The first question I asked myself was … if you wanted to improve your health-related quality of life, why wouldn’t you follow these guidelines?

Then I thought, this is so vague; quality of life is subjective, at best. Each individual might define it completely differently.

Finally, I wondered … do survivors define quality of life differently? Are these guidelines the ones I would recommend?

The answer is no. My personal healthier “quality of life” recommendations would be:

• Walk outside for one hour a day. If it rains, read a magazine instead.
• Eat a balanced diet, from all the food groups, every day; heavy on the veggies and whole grains; choose organic when you can.
• Don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, don’t drink to excess — but allow yourself an occasional glass of wine or preferred cocktail.

(Oh, a possible substitution for that last one if you are a recovering alcoholic or drug user: pat yourself on the back every single day for abstaining even in the face of all your survivor stress.)

Now it’s your turn … what are your healthier ‘quality of life’ recommendations?