How Do You Stay Healthy After Beating Breast Cancer?

Back when you were originally diagnosed with breast cancer, the focus of your life immediately shifted. While previously you may have been worried about the little annoyances and problems of life, a cancer diagnosis can completely change your entire perspective on the world.

The purpose of your life and everything you do is to defeat the cancer inside of your body and regain control over your life and body. However, once you have had and overcome breast cancer, the question becomes, how do you stay healthy after breast cancer? This question can be difficult for you to answer but is not an impossible goal to achieve. Get to know more about some of the ways that you can keep yourself as healthy as possible after you recover from breast cancer.

Post Breast Cancer: Get Up And Get Moving

During your cancer treatments and recovery, you likely spent a great deal of time resting, either in bed or sitting around and trying to deal with the cancer and the treatment. Cancer treatments themselves can drain you of a great deal of your mental energy as well as your physical strength.

When you have overcome your breast cancer and recovered from treatments, the best thing that you can do for your physical and mental health is to get up and get moving. Exercise has a wide variety of positive effects on a person’s health after breast cancer treatment. One of the greatest effects is that you will be able to rebuild your physical strength and stamina that you lost when you were dealing with your cancer.

This building of strength and stamina is good for the body as well as for your mental health and sense of self. Moderate exercise for around 30 minutes per day can also help to stave off other illnesses and may even help to prevent the recurrence of cancer.

Stick To Your Regular Checkups And Doctor’s Appointments

Just because you have beaten your cancer does not mean that you can stop going to the doctor and taking care of your body. Follow-up visits are an important part of cancer treatment and aftercare. These follow-up visits are not to be missed if you want to stay healthy and cancer free as they are designed to ensure that if there is any sign of cancer recurrence that it is found in the earliest possible stages and dealt with swiftly.

Your general wellness visits and checkups with your primary care physician are also important. These will help you to remain healthy and ensure that you are taking proper care of your body as well as possible moving forward.

Avoid Smoking And Drink In Moderation

Smoking is a habit that you should never engage in, especially after you have gone through breast cancer treatment. There is too high a risk that smoking will cause cancer as well as cardiovascular and respiratory health problems to make it very risky. If you were a smoker before, this means going through some kind of program (i.e. nicotine patches, hypnosis etc) to break the habit.

You should also try to limit your alcohol consumption as much as possible. Alcohol can cause numerous health issues and if you are on any medications for your breast cancer or other health issues that may have arisen from the cancer or the treatment, alcohol can interfere with their effectiveness.

Have Fun

A positive attitude can have a major impact on your health and on how you feel on a general, daily basis. Now that you have succeeded in beating breast cancer, it is time to get out there and enjoy your life. Get involved in activities that you enjoy. Take a vacation with your spouse, friends, or the whole family. Try something new that you have always wanted to do. The more you enjoy and do in your life, the better and happier you will feel and the more you will want to stick to healthy habits that also make you feel good.

Now that you know some of the steps to staying healthy after breast cancer, you can put them to use in your life as soon as possible.