Cancer survivors’ health blooms when they garden

Anybody who’s spent a few nights in an Airbnb is accustomed to being told by a shower curtain or welcome mat to “live, laugh, love.” But that message means so much to Paula Eakins that she doesn’t trust just one household item to convey it: Her living room is accented with so many “live, laugh, love” picture frames, ribbons, pennants, and medallions that I quit counting them after scanning just one interior wall of the North Huntsville ranch house she shares with her husband and Health Evangelism Ministries co-director, Curtis.

“You can see my theme,” she said, laughing.

Also, loving and living.

That last part wasn’t a sure thing when she found a lump in her left breast in 2006. After receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, Eakins underwent surgery but declined the chemotherapy and radiation that her doctor recommended. “We did a lot of research, and it did not look good to us,” said Eakins, who in the 1990s moved down from Philadelphia to join Oakwood University as a professor of nutrition. “Then, lots of prayer, and with the prayer warriors, I’m still here.”

Cancer survivors are at greater risk for developing second cancers, heart disease, and diabetes. Yet Eakins has done so well since her mastectomy that she’s become unofficial spokeswoman for a University of Alabama at Birmingham study showing improved health outcomes for one-time cancer patients who take up gardening. According to research published by JAMA Network Open in June, Eakins and her fellow 380 study participants ate more vegetables, developed better gut microflora, and had less trouble standing up than cancer survivors who weren’t given a raised bed to tend.

Even if it’s not part of Eakins’ favorite motto, she credits planting, pruning, and picking with changing her outlook and enhancing her life.

“This is one of those interventions that sticks with people,” principal investigator Wendy Demark-Wahnefried said. “Of all the interventions I’ve done over 30 years, I love this intervention most.”

Eakins, 77, remembers her oncologist was surprised when she didn’t take his medical advice, which only proves he didn’t know the future YouTuber in his office. An inveterate go-getter who’s quick to sign up for a charity walk or costume contest at her First Seventh-day Adventist Church, Eakins has a knack for taking the wheel.

As soon as Eakins found a mass in her breast, she went to a nearby clinic, where a doctor ordered a mammogram. But it was late on a Friday afternoon, and most mammogram providers had shut down for the weekend. Fortunately, before the doctor returned to her exam room to report it wasn’t possible to schedule a mammogram, Eakins had bonded with the nurse.

“I have a mammogram appointment on Monday,” the nurse said. “Give her mine.”

Immediately after her mammogram, Eakins was sent to a surgeon. She saw lots of doctors over the coming years, with checkups scheduled every six months until she was declared cancer-free. In 2017, one year after being promoted to survivor status, she started volunteering at Clearview Cancer Institute. During one of her shifts, she noticed a flier seeking Harvest for Health study participants.

Despite never having grown anything more significant than a houseplant, she registered right away.

“They said they would bring all the things necessary for you to do a garden: the hoses, the soil, the plants that were supposed to be cancer fighters,” Eakins said. “Then, when I got in the program, they said, ‘Well, Paula, we’re going to have a 4×8 garden.’ I said, ‘OK.’”

“And it’s going to be raised off the ground,” one of the master gardeners assigned to mentor Eakins continued.

“OK, that all sounds good,” Eakins said. “But I’ve got an issue with bugs.”

“You’ve got an issue with bugs?” the flabbergasted master gardener said. “We’re going to have a little problem.”

Of course, the problem didn’t last long. Eakins studied up on all the insects she could possibly encounter in her backyard plot of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, basil, and beets. She put together a notebook with her critter information organized in clear sheet protectors, and prayed for detente “with these bug things,” the most feared of which was a five-spotted hawkmoth, better known as the tomato hornworm.

“I went out there one day, and lo and behold, there is that big old huge hornworm,” Eakins recalled. “I said, ‘This ain’t happening.’ So, I grabbed it with my gloves, said ‘bye, Felicia,’ put it on the ground and stomped it. You’ve got to get an attitude or they will eat your garden up.”

By that point, Eakins was deeply attached to her garden, and the 45 minutes a day she spent communing with it. She wowed at the way nature worked, with the scent of one plant protecting another.

“The whole thing of putting your hands in the dirt; the whole thing of growing stuff from seed, and then seeing it blossom into a stem, into a leaf, and then all of a sudden the fruit coming from it,” Eakins said. “That’s amazing.”

Eakins has since installed a second raised bed and turned down an invitation to become a master gardener herself. She travels too frequently to commit to the program, but six other participants in the study—which was limited to Alabama cancer survivors aged 50-95—have earned their credentials.

“I do a lot of diet and exercise interventions, and web-based interventions, and those work,” said Demark-Wahnefried, who developed the program after getting to know master gardeners through the Black Churches United for Better Health project at the University of North Carolina. “But in the long term, if I had to bet on anything, it would be this gardening intervention.”

According to Demark-Wahnefried, anything that ups a person’s daily vegetable consumption by one-third of a serving should be considered successful. Yet researchers found a range of benefits they hadn’t anticipated. Participants could walk more steps in two minutes after they became home gardeners, and they reported feeling better. Perceived health, Demark-Wahnefried notes, “is very big for overall survival.”

Researchers were also taken aback by participants’ enthusiasm. When they visited with one breast cancer survivor years after the start of the program, they were impressed that she was growing an in-ground garden. Later, they tried to get back in touch to see if she could help recruit more registrants.

“Oh, I’m sorry you couldn’t find me,” she said when they finally reached her. “I’ve moved to a farm.”