This time of year can get crazy, and many of us get through it by telling ourselves that we’ll start taking better care of our health — AFTER the holidays are over.

“I’ll run a marathon!”  ”I’ll head to the gym every morning!”  ”I’ll bike to work!”

All laudable goals, to be sure.  But one speaker at our Research Conference argued that such sudden, sweeping changes are tough to make permanent, and only set us up for failure.

We wrote about him, and his preferred approach to getting more activity, lowering weight — and lowering cancer risk — in this month’s AICR eNews.

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Some candid shots from last week’s 20th Annual AICR Research Conference on Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and Cancer:

From the AICR Research Conference Hide

Several AICR-funded researchers came to our conference last week to present their latest findings in the poster session:

Dr. Emmanuel T. Akporiaye of the Robert W. Franz Cancer Research Center in Portland, Oregon, updated us on the progress of his grant examining the effect of a derivative of vitamin E on breast cancer tumors. (Earlier this year, we profiled Dr. A in AICR’s biweekly e-newsletter Cancer Research Update.  A longer version of that interview appeared in this Summer’s AICR ScienceNow newsletter.)

Dr. Nameer B. Kirma of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio presented data from his work with soy components and breast cancer.

Dr. Meghan M. Mensack is using an AICR grant at the Colorado State University to study the anti-cancer potential of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L)

Lots more AICR-funded scientists, after the jump.

(more…)

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At our Research Conference last week, we were honored to have Kathryn H. Schmitz, PhD, MPH, FACSM give a talk on strategies for promoting physical activity among cancer survivors.

It was Dr. Schmitz’s PAL (Physical Activity and Lymphedema) Trial that showed that survivors with lymphedema (swelling of the limbs) could benefit from gradual, closely supervised weight training – a finding that challenged the conventional wisdom that lymphedema sufferers should avoid weight-bearing exercise.  She published her findings in the August issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.  We profiled this research in the latest issue of AICR’s ScienceNow newsletter.

But that doesn’t mean that women who have, or who are at high risk for lymphedema, should just head to the gym and start lifting away.  We caught up with Dr. Schmitz at lunch, and she talked about two online resources to help these women get the guidance they need.

www.lymphnet.org – The National Lymphedema Network. Find physical therapists trained in lymphedema issues.

www.strengthandcourage.net – Order a DVD on exercise after breast cancer surgery – includes many of the exercises used in Dr. Schmitz’s PAL trial.

For more general advice about diet and physical activity during and after cancer, don’t forget to check out the AICR/New York Presbyterian Hospital DVD, Food For the Fight: Guidelines for Healthy Nutrition During and After Cancer Treatment

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…Because we’ve got lots more stuff from AICR’s 2009 Research Conference still to share.

All week, we’ll be posting session summaries, pics, interviews with AICR grantees and conference presenters, and lots more.

It was a packed two-day conference; keep checking this blog as we go about unpacking it.

From the AICR Research Conference Hide