7 ways to science your life for the coming year

Pace yourself

Whatever your goal — losing weight, starting an exercise program, getting better sleep, kicking a smoking habit, learning to clog dance — it’s important to focus on slow, steady progress, said Greenlee, who also serves as the director of Seattle Cancer Care Alliance’s Integrative Medicine Program.

“Now is not the time to make huge, grandiose New Year’s resolutions,” she said. “It’s time to be realistic, especially given the last two years.”

With behavior change, Greenlee said it’s much better to think small and incremental, particularly if you’re looking to cut disease risk by changing eating patterns.  

“It’s not going to make much difference with regard to cancer risk or chronic disease risk if you make dietary changes for one month and then go back to your old habits,” she said. “You have to pace yourself and make changes that are sustainable.”

Also, those new year’s changes don’t have to happen this month.

“People think of January as a typical time to make changes, but any time of year is a good time for improving diet and physical activity habits,” said nutritional epidemiologist Dr. Marian Neuhouser. “If people want to make changes and they don’t necessarily get it done in January — that’s totally fine.”

Move daily for a longer life

Your body — that sophisticated biological machine that houses your brain and consciousness — is built to do more than walk from a desk chair to the couch to the bed and back each day.

Bodies need to move, especially as they get older; otherwise, they start to break down. That’s why Hutch epidemiologist Dr. Anne McTiernan — who studies how exercise influences our bodies and our health — and countless other public health researchers advise folding physical activity into your regular routine for long-term good health.

That doesn’t mean you should join a new gym and start exercising like a fiend trying to shed those pandemic pounds.

“Exercise helps people feel better and helps them sleep better,” she said. “It’s also important for mental health. But you don’t lose weight with exercise. Exercise will keep you from gaining weight. And it helps with a weight loss program, there’s no question about that. But studies have shown weight loss is mainly about diet.”

Walking, jogging, biking or busting some other move a few minutes each day provides innumerable benefits, though: from clearer thinking to reduced anxiety and depression; from better sleep to stronger bones and muscles; from lowering risk of heart disease to protection against stroke, diabetes and a clutch of cancers. Read more about how exercise functions as medicine.

Biologically, exercise is a major cancer-buster. Regular moderate physical activity reduces estrogen, fuel for estrogen-receptor positive cancers, and is associated with the repair of DNA damage, another prime cancer driver. Higher-intensity activities such as running, swimming and fast cycling were associated with the greatest benefit to DNA repair, per Neuhouser, one of the study’s co-authors. Researchers believe exercise induces production of enzymes that dispose of harmful oxygen radicals and repair DNA damage.

Staying physically active can also help manage pain such arthralgia, a common symptom of anti-hormone therapy given to breast cancer patients.

“Scientists have also shown that people with arthritis feel better if they exercise,” said McTiernan, who co-authored a systematic, comprehensive review on the topic for the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines. “And for women using anti-hormone drugs, exercise helped with their symptoms, as well.”

Other research has shown that exercise improves attention and self-control and can help prevent cognitive decline in those with dementia.

“Many people with cancer are worried about chemo brain,” McTiernan said. “Exercise would be a wonderful thing for them to try out. When it comes to exercise, there are many things that are relevant to cancer patients and survivors.”

Regular movement also keeps us from sitting too much, which causes serious health issues. For cancer survivors, that could be a lifesaver.

A study just published in the journal JAMA Oncology followed 1,535 cancer patients over the course of several years and found that the least-active survivors had 5.5 times the risk of death compared with survivors who were most active. (The least-active group sat more than eight hours a day and did less than 150 minutes a week of physical activity; the most-active group sat less than four hours a day and did more than 150 minutes a week of physical activity.)

“Exercise can be part of a concept of caring for yourself,” McTiernan said. “So try to find a way to make it enjoyable. For some people, that means exercising with a friend. Or doing a sport. Or even dancing, which is excellent exercise. Find what it is that helps you care for yourself and that’s going to be beneficial for the whole biological machine, including your brain.”

Be mindful and lean towards green

Greenlee, who researches ways to create sustainable change for better health, also said to rethink the whole concept of dieting.

“Researchers are looking at mindfulness now as a way to help achieve and maintain long-term behavioral habits,” she said. “We think that if people can be more mindful of why they’re eating and when they’re eating, even paying attention to their chewing, it will be helpful for them. They may have less stress eating.”

But what you put in your mouth also matters, and Greenlee said if you’re looking for a long, healthy life, lean towards a plant-based diet, not to be confused with a plant-only or vegetarian or vegan diet. In a plant-based diet, you proportionately choose more foods from plant sources than meat or dairy sources. Learn more about healthy eating on Fred Hutch’s Cook for Your Life.

“The benefit of a plant-based diet is there are a lot of phytonutrients — also known as phytochemicals — that have cancer-preventive properties as well as anti-inflammatory benefits,” she said. “It helps promote immune function; it helps promote cellular repair.”

If you want to get molecular about it, fruits and vegetables and grains and beans and nuts and spices and everything else “grown” contain nutrients galore, which keep our bodies fueled and running properly, and they are loaded with fiber, which keeps our digestive system functioning regularly and support our gut microbiome. Many vegetable families (think brassicas, or cruciferous veggies like broccoli, kale, radishes and Brussels sprouts) actively fight cancer through their plant chemicals (“phyto” is Greek for “plant”).

Linked to a plant’s color, taste and smell, phytochemicals are often part of a plant’s defense mechanism against pests, predators or damage caused by, say, radiation from UV rays. Humans who eat plants benefit from this natural cancer prevention, as well.

It’s such a potent benefit, Hutch researcher Dr. Tom Kensler helped synthesize the process into a pill, creating tiny “broccoli bombs” that target a key pathway in the body’s cellular defense mechanism and the enzymes it regulates, which then transform fat-soluble toxins into a stable molecule that’s water-soluble, which allows the potential cancer-causing agents taken in via air, food or water to be excreted out through urine. Read more about Kensler’s cancer-busting broccoli sprout pills in this Fred Hutch News story.

Another big benefit of plants is that the fiber they contain is crucial for our gut microbiome, which researchers have linked more and more to our immune system and our overall health. High- or low-fiber diets can even affect how cancer drugs work on our bodies. A recent study showed that a high-fiber diet was associated with improved survival of melanoma patients given immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy.

“Eating high-fiber foods is really important for the microbiome,” said Greenlee. “You promote the diversity of bacteria which is important for your body’s immune function.”

Neuhouser, who studies obesity and its effects on health, is currently evaluating data showing that women who consumed more plant proteins (such as legumes, beans, nuts and peanut butter) relative to animal proteins had “dramatically” less C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker.

And there’s an additional benefit to going green — along with red, yellow, orange, blue and eggplant.