My mom was recently diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. She is Stage I with no lymph node involvement. She underwent six chemo treatments an

A good place to start is what's a common misconception in that triple-negative breast cancer has a truly awful prognosis. But in fact, that's not really the truth. Factors such as size of tumor and lymph node status are still very important. For a Stage I breast cancer patient, even with a triple-negative breast cancer, most patients live to a ripe old age. In addition, if the patient received adjuvant chemotherapy, there are significant reductions in the risk of recurrence and death due to breast cancer. So I would not consider this a matter of gloom and doom. Beyond this, there is an emerging area of what we can do after chemotherapy for women with triple-negative breast cancer. There are some fascinating recent data from a trial that was conducted by Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of University of California, San Francisco, that looked to see whether or not modifying one's dietary fat intake would have any effect on outcome for early stage breast cancer patients. While dietary fat reduction had relatively little effect in women who had estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers, in women with estrogen-receptor-negative breast cancers, there was a significant reduction in the risk of recurrence for women with a low dietary fat intake. There's also increasing evidence, most prominently from the Women's Health Study in Boston, that women who exercise regularly (3 hours a week or more) have a lower risk of recurrence of their breast cancer than women who do not exercise regularly. So these studies point to the possibility that lifestyle interventions may be important for the breast cancer survivor.