September is blood cancer awareness month and an ideal time to reflect on living your best life with an MPN!

The SIMM study (Survey of integrative medicine in myeloproliferative neoplasms) found ‘an overall pattern of lower symptom burden, fatigue, depression, and higher quality of life were revealed with integrative medicine utilization’.  Integrative medicine refers to such things as yoga, aerobic activity, strength training, meditation, massages, support groups, improved nutrition etc.

To find out more about living well, we recommend revisiting this excellent webinar, organised by the Leukaemia Foundation, which features patient stories as well as outstanding presentations by:

• clinical haematologist Cecily Forsyth who has a special interest in MPNs (commencing at 12 minutes into the webinar),
• health psychologist Jane Fletcher whose perspective and sensible suggestions are incredibly encouraging and motivating (at 51 minutes), and
• physiotherapist Julie Allen, herself a lymphoma survivor who provides a wealth of knowledge about how to manage fatigue and the physical impacts of blood cancer (at 1hr 39 minutes).

It is a long webinar but it is extremely informative, inspiring and we can’t recommend it highly enough.  It is available HERE.

And of course our own LIVING WELL pages contain a wealth of information for MPN patients about nutrition, meditation, maintaining muscle mass etc.