Are You Living Well With Cancer?

For people dealing with cancer, living well might mean living longer. After asking 3,700 people with late stage cancer to rate their quality of life on a scale of 0 to 10, Mayo Clinic researchers determined that those with as score of 5 or higher lived 7.5 months longer than people with a poor quality of life.

One of the best ways to improve quality of life is through stress reduction. "We don't have an anti stress pill," says Moshe Frenkel, M.D., medical director of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's Integrative Medicine Program, "but research shows that mind-body techniques can relieve stress and support the immune system, which is especially helpful for patients with cancer." What's more, many practices can ease cancer-specific problems: Yoga, for instance, may promote sleep, and acupuncture can ease pain and nausea.