Cancer is a disease that everyone is truly afraid of. You may be reading this because you or anyone close to you has just been diagnosed with it. Or, in better news, perhaps you’ve recovered from a long and arduous treatment. Whatever the situation, there’s always hope. Beyond your initial diagnosis and recovery, there are many ways to improve your health even if you’re recovering from cancer.
While it’s scary and life-threatening, a cancer diagnosis doesn’t mean a death sentence. In fact, cancer screening enables early detection to increase your likelihood of survival. Check out this site to learn more about cancer screening.
Moving forward, apart from the conventional treatment forms suggested by your doctors, there are other things you can do by yourself to improve your chances of recovering. This article provides some tips that you or anyone else you know that has recently been diagnosed with cancer can start practicing every day.
Start Exercising
With or without a cancer diagnosis, exercise is the secret to a long and healthy life. More so when you’ve just had cancer, you can recover better when you start exercising. But how do you begin? Just be sure to be extremely careful, given that you’re still on the road to full recovery.
Cancer survivors who start exercising may experience some of these benefits:
- Reduced risk of the cancer returning;
- Increased strength and endurance;
- Improved sleep;
- Fewer signs and symptoms of depression;
- Less pain.
Before you start exercising, however, be sure that you first abide by the following tips so you can stay safe and be successful in your routine:
- Be patient with yourself. Remember that your body has just gone through a lot of changes due to cancer. Don’t pressure yourself right away to do exercises that are too much to handle.
- Talk to your doctor. Given your current state of health, it’s important to always consult with your doctor every time that you do something related to your health. For instance, check with the treatment’s side effects so that you can properly manage it alongside your exercise. Most importantly, you can also shape your exercise plan according to your specific needs.
- Choose to walk. One of the simplest, easiest, and most gentle forms of exercise you can do is to make walking a part of your daily routine. Walk at least twenty to thirty minutes daily. This can also improve your mood and energy levels.
- Set clear goals. Be specific with the goals you wish to achieve with your exercise. If you work with a fitness instructor, they can help set the right exercises for you, given your cancer diagnosis.
- Keep your routine flexible. Always listen to your body. It’s okay to rest when you feel tired. Remember that you may also still be battling some treatment side effects. Don’t add pain on top of the other.
Check On Your Mental Health
Cancer doesn’t just eat up your physical health. The truth is, it can truly affect your overall health in more ways than you thought it would. One of the facets of your health that can suffer tremendously, too, is your mental health.
It’s normal for cancer patients and even early survivors to go through a lot of anxiety, depression, stress, and trauma. But these aren’t good for your recovery. Stress, most specifically, can get the best of you. Worst case scenario, these patients may question their ability to survive, worth, and purpose to the point that many would think of ending their lives themselves so they no longer have to go through the ordeal of treatment that doesn’t guarantee full recovery.
Once you start feeling these negative emotions, it’s important to have these addressed as well. Taking good care of your mental health after a cancer diagnosis means that you’re allowing an overall positive state of well-being.
Eat A Balanced Diet
You are what you eat. So most especially now that there’s a sickness you’ve got to battle and win through, it’s important that you feed your body with all the essential vitamins and nutrients that it needs. Your diet has to be varied–a lot of fruits, vegetables, fiber, and even whole grains.
Here are some ideas that you can adopt:
- Opt for a healthy source of carbohydrates, like legumes, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables;
- Choose healthy fats, like omega-3 fatty acids, which can be sourced from certain fish and walnuts;
- Go for protein sources that are low in saturated fats, like lean meat, eggs, seeds, and legumes.
Eating a healthy and balanced diet is very important so you can keep your body strong. Just be sure that you’re doing this the right way as too much of everything may also be harmful. Have a nutritionist create a meal or nutrition plan for you. This way, you’re guaranteed that your meals are helpful for your condition.
When some cancer treatment forms can be aggressive and eat up the best of you, you’ve got to do your best to keep your body strong through the right nutrients and minerals.
See A Specialist Regularly
This may seem like an obvious fact, but there could still be people who think that seeing a doctor should be limited to every treatment session. If you want to increase your chances of surviving, you’ve got to do more than just that.
See a specialist regularly so you can clearly monitor your progress. There are many patients that are treating cancer just by seeing a surgeon or their family practitioner. While this helps, go deeper with the level of expertise by seeing an oncologist. These are the doctors that have spent years studying and retraining regularly in the field of cancer.
Conclusion
A cancer diagnosis can affect one’s life in so many ways. It’s safe to consider it as a battle that the patient will have to fight through.
While challenging, it doesn’t have to end at a loss. There are many stories of victory with cancer, and yours or your loved ones can be one of these, too.
As you can see, there are many things you can do for yourself to beat the big C. Beyond just beating it, you may be able to live a longer and better quality of life.
