A Healthy Lifestyle Will Help Patients Get Through Myeloma Treatment

When undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, it is essential that patients take up healthy habits to mitigate or control other health conditions and be able to tolerate potential side effects of the cancer treatment, explained Dr. Krina K. Patel.

READ MORE: How a Nutritious Diet May Help During Myeloma Treatment

In a recent interview at the 2023 European Hematology Association Congress, Patel, who is an associate professor in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma, Division of Cancer Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, emphasized the importance of healthy lifestyle for individuals undergoing myeloma treatment. And, with many clinical trials having eligibility criteria based onhow healthy a patient is overall and how independently they can perform their daily tasks, this is particularly important for patients hoping to participate in the research of new drugs and therapies, according to Patel.

Transcription

I tell my patients that … even though we're talking about myeloma all the time, I want your heart and your brain and your kidneys to be really good, too. So it's really important to do everything you can to stay as healthy as possible.

You know, we want your quality of life to be good, but to do that, you still have to be healthy. So really, it's about your performance status and other comorbidities … Any treatment I want to give you, I want to make sure I'm not going to make things worse for you, right? So especially those patients who are in early-line induction therapy, and now just went through either transplant or on maintenance (therapy, which aims to prevent disease from coming back), that's the time to really start working on getting in shape and changing lifestyle habits so that we can actually get you through these other therapies. They are overall safe. But you know, nothing has zero toxicity.

So, I will say the majority of my patients are eligible for these trials. But again, it's really making sure it's the right thing at the right time for you, and that we've optimized the rest of your body and mind to get you through this so that you can enjoy that quality of life after.

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