Helping cancer survivors reach and maintain a healthy weight through diet and exercise
A healthy diet, weight control, and a physically active lifestyle are important for everybody, but especially for cancer survivors, who are at higher risk for recurrence as well as second malignancies, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and functional decline. \n\nNutrition scientist, Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD, has made significant advances designing and implementing home-based diet and exercise interventions for cancer survivors. Her team created a website, https://survivorshine.org/, that helps cancer survivors reach and maintain a healthy weight through diet and exercise. And she\u2019s recruiting cancer survivors living in the Southeastern United States to participate in AMPLIFY, a research study that will help find out the benefits of a healthy eating and exercise program.\n\nWendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD, is an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor. She\u2019s also Professor of Nutrition Sciences and Associate Director for Cancer Prevention and Control at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.\n\nHer team is actively recruiting for a web-based clinical trial to improve diet & exercise health behaviors of cancer survivors: AMPLIFY@uabmc.edu or 1-833-535-7934 (https://amplifymyhealth.org/info).\n\n2:22 - On how COVID-19 is affecting her work \n\n3:33 \u2013 Her breakthrough research in the early 1990s into why women that received adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer gained weight\n\n7:05 \u2013 On sarcopenic obesity and the challenges and risks it poses for cancer survivors\n\n9:14 \u2013 How her team has carved out a niche delivering home-based and web-based interventions to cancer survivors (as opposed to asking them to come to a clinic)\n\n11:36 \u2013 The RENEW trial, an intervention where participants were mailed personalized diet and exercise plans and received telephone counseling from a health coach\n\n16:05 \u2013 SurvivorSHINE.org, a website her team developed where cancer survivors can receive \u201cpersonalized information and tools to help them reach and maintain a healthy weight through healthy eating and exercise\u201d\n\n18:45 \u2013 On why it\u2019s so important for interventions to be scalable and to meet people where they are \u2013 their home\n\n21:49 \u2013 With people across the United States sheltering in place, what cancer survivors can do right now, from their homes, to positively impact their physical well-being\n\n24:20 \u2013 How ACS funding has impacted her research