ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the evidence that lifestyle and self-help strategies can help diminish many of the adverse effects of treatments maximize the probability of long-term control and in some cases improve overall survival. Health care professionals, therefore, have an ideal opportunity to guide and encourage their patients into a healthier lifestyle, not only to benefit themselves but ameliorate the increasing burden on the health care systems. The mechanisms of risks for obesity are multifactorial and interact with other lifestyle habits such as lack of physical activity and types of food eaten but the likely candidates for increased cancer risk are overeating, alterations in cytokines and endogenous hormones. A physically active lifestyle improves well-being by reducing many of the common adverse effects that plague individuals after cancer and its treatments. With the publication of more and more lifestyle-related research, there is justifiable increased interest in the management patients in the survivorship.
