Breast cancer survivors who believe certain health behaviors helped cause their disease are more likely to change those behaviors after their diagnosis, a new study shows,

The same motivation appears to hold in close relatives of cancer survivors, Drs. Carolyn Rabin and Bernadine Pinto of Miriam Hospital and Brown Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island report in the medical journal Psycho-Oncology.

“Survivors take an active problem-solving approach to preventing a future incidence of cancer; they develop their own understanding or representation of the cancer and implement preventive behavioral strategies accordingly,” they write.

Many cancer survivors don’t choose to adopt healthier habits after their diagnosis, Rabin and Pinto note. Previous research shows that 50 percent of breast cancer survivors don’t get the recommended five servings of fruit and vegetables daily, for example, while 23 percent eat diets high in fat, and 28 to 43 percent don’t exercise.

The researchers hypothesized that survivors and their relatives who believed certain habits may have contributed to their disease, and who thought that changing these habits would prevent the disease from recurring, would be more likely to change those habits. To investigate, they surveyed 65 breast cancer survivors and 33 of their first-degree relatives three months after the patients had completed their cancer treatment, and again three months later.

Patients who thought that sedentary habits, alcohol consumption or bad diet had helped cause their disease and that changing these habits would prevent disease recurrence were more likely to change those behaviors.

The researchers found a particularly strong association with diet, with cancer survivors who thought eating too much fat and not enough fruit and vegetables contributed to their illness more likely to cut their fat consumption and boost their plant food intake.

“Understanding the factors that prompt the initiation of healthy lifestyle changes among cancer survivors and first-degree relatives is a necessary first step toward developing interventions for those unlikely to initiate such behavior changes on their own,” Rabin and Pinto conclude.

SOURCE: Psycho-Oncology, August 2006.