Dear subscriber,
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2020! We'd like to share two recent pieces of research with you.
Lost your sweet tooth?
As advances in technology lead to earlier cancer diagnosis and better treatment, more people are now living with and beyond cancer. But this opens up a new set of challenges – a key one is improving quality of life during treatment and after. Thankfully, more research is being done in this area.
Common side-effects of treatment include hair loss and nausea. Less well-known is the change and even loss of taste and smell that people experience, which can last for years after treatment has ended. A recent study in the US looked at how changes in taste and smell affect what people eat, and any changes in their weight.
The analysis found that changes in sweet and bitter perception were more common than changes to salt or sour perception, and that less sensitivity to sweet tastes was linked to people consuming fewer calories.
This research review only used a small sample size, and it calls for more research to be done. In the meantime, information such as chef Ryan Riley's recipe booklet can help you eat healthily during and after cancer. All of Ryan's recipes have been tailored to people experiencing taste changes, to help them enjoy food again. Plus browse our tips for managing weight loss.
Diagnosing change
 After a cancer diagnosis, were you determined to make changes to your lifestyle, to cope better with side-effects or in the hope of preventing cancer spreading or returning?
But amid the massive upheaval of such a diagnosis – hospital visits, coping with often debilitating or invasive treatment, and dealing with family or work commitments that don’t simply disappear – do people stick to their initial ambitions to be more healthy?
As part of a project part-funded by us, Moniek van Zutphen, a PhD student in the Netherlands, assessed what changes people with colorectal cancer made to their lifestyle after their diagnosis, judged by how closely they followed WCRF’s Recommendations on healthy eating and drinking, and exercise.
About 70 per cent of people improved on at least one Recommendation, and people mainly drank fewer sugary drinks and ate less red and processed meat. But overall, lifestyles were not healthier because people did worse in other Recommendations.
You can read more about the research here. If you'd like to share things that have helped or you’ve found difficult after a cancer diagnosis, please get in touch.
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