A study published in Frontiers in Nutrition, found that nutrient dense healthy diet were 93% less likely to die from squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck during the first three years after diagnosis.
The eating habits of patients with the best survival rates was best based on the Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010). The AHEI-2010 was developed by Harvard Medical School as a measure of dietary quality rated based on the foods’ disease-fighting properties. The AHEI-2010 rates the quality of an individual’s diet from 0-110 based on how frequently they consume 11 categories of healthy and unhealthy foods. High scores are rewarded for more consuming more fruits and vegetables per day and avoidance of unhealthy foods like trans fats and sugar-ladened beverages.
This prospective cohort study was conducted from the Head and Neck Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) where participants reported data on diet and other lifestyle factors three times a year. The investigators tracked outcomes from 468 patients with known head & neck cancer from SPORE.
In addition to AHEI-2010, researchers also compared the patient’s eating habits to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet and the Alternative Mediterranean Diet (aMED), and three kinds of low-carbohydrate diets.
The study period saw 93 deaths with 74 being cancer-related.
Each 11 point increase in adherence to the AHEI-2010 diet lead to a 60% decrease in death risk. The other diets had no significant effects on survival.
“When we tested all of these indices, what we found was that only one of them—the AHEI-2010—had a very strong relationship to the outcome of all-cause mortality,” said author, Christian Maino Vieytes said.
The nutritional diet was also tied to lower symptom burden.
A nutrient dense, whole-food plant-based diet continues to be one the most important thing someone can do for themselves in both cancer prevention and increasing cancer survivorship.
CA. Maino Vieytes et al. Adherence to a priori-defined diet quality indices throughout the early disease course is associated with survival in head and neck cancer survivors: an application involving marginal structural models. Frontiers in Nutrition. DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2022.791141
