Ask the Experts: How can I maintain my quality of life while living with metastatic breast cancer?

There are many ways you can improve your quality of life while living with metastatic breast cancer. Maryam Lustberg, MD, explains how.

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Dr. Lustberg, What can I do to maintain my quality of life while living with metastatic breast cancer?

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Thank you for that question. I think it's such an important one. Cancer treatment control of the disease is important,

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but at the same time, we also want to maximize quality of life, symptom management.

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There are different ways to do this. One is to honestly and openly report any symptoms you're having to your oncologist

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and nursing teams. There's so much we can do in terms of what we call supportive care to actively manage symptoms,

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and they make a ton of difference in terms of improving quality of life. Second, there are times where we need

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to reduce the dose of the treatment to make it more tolerable. So again, if the supportive care therapies are not

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being effective, you're still feeling super fatigued or having other bothersome side effects that

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are interfering with your quality of life, knowing that dose holds and dose reductions are absolutely

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an option. Third, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of regular physical activity.

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Going for a walk for 10 minutes is one of the best things that you can do to help preserve quality of life.

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Focusing on getting wholesome nutrition, things that you enjoy, lots of hydration, maximizing sleep and rest, spending time

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with family and friends, and really doing things that you enjoy.