In tomorrow morning’s column (October 30), I wrote about a study that made the front page of the Montreal Gazette last week. It reported on a study by James Coyne that showed that cancer survival was not affected by attitude. I had the topic in the back of my mind for a while since this particular study only confirmed what research was already pretty clear on.
The initial buzz about how attitude can prolong life was a combination of research bias and wishful thinking. Nevertheless, I was always of the opinion that days lived should be measured by the number of quality days. By this measure, attitude does prolong life by giving us a lot more of them, whether we have cancer or not.
This study was made all the more poignant by the fact that my cousin is dying of advanced esophageal cancer.
I wrote something similar last year in a column called “Getting your wish.” You can find it in the link to the Métro columns.
How many days will you live?
Camillo Zacchia, Ph.D.
Psychologist – Douglas InstituteDo people with cancer live longer if they have a positive attitude? A large and well-designed study was just published in the journal Cancer that examined this question and came up with the conclusion that a state of emotional well-being had no effect on survival. The results may have surprised many people since the idea that a positive attitude is beneficial to beating cancer, or at least holding it off, is a popular one. On the other hand, can we really say that attitude has no effect on survival?
Calendar days
The idea that a positive attitude helps cancer sufferers live longer has been around a long time. We certainly all want to believe it, and early studies of the question were able to demonstrate a dramatic effect. One study even found that women with breast cancer lived an average of eighteen months longer by simply being part of a support group. Later studies were not able to reproduce the findings, and this new study simply confirms what was becoming pretty clear; cancer takes away everyone at the same rate regardless of whether they keep a sunny outlook or wallow in despair.
What this means is that if we simply count days on a calendar, attitude does not change the final number. I just don’t think that is what we should be measuring.Life days
How do we define a day of life? Technically, it is obvious. If we haven’t died before the stroke of midnight, we can put a checkmark on our calendar. But what kind of life is it? If I spend the day doing something I enjoy, or connecting with friends and loved ones, or simply appreciating the little things that make us human, like a piece of music, a laugh, or the smell of freshly fallen leaves, then I have done far more than simply existed.A lesson for the rest of us
Everyone has a finite number of days left on the earth. What that number is remains unknown for most of us. While it may not be particularly pleasant to contemplate this fact, I think it is important to learn a lesson from this study. Attitude alone does not prolong the number of days lived with cancer if we measure with a calendar. If we measure the quality of those days, however, attitude makes all the difference.I think the same can be said for the rest of us as well.
Tagged as Life, positive attitude.
Posted on 29 Oct 2007
