New Cancer Guidelines Reverse Decades of Advice to Avoid Exercise

[Guest guest]

New Cancer Guidelines Reverse Decades of Advice for Patients to Avoid

Exercise

by Tony Isaacs (tbyil.com)

A new set of national guidelines for cancer patients presented at this

year's meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is

reversing decades of common mainstream advice for such patients to avoid

exercise. Instead, the new guidelines advise patients to " avoid

inactivity " to boost quality of life, strength and fitness.

Schmitz, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of Epidemiology and

Biostatistics and a member of the Abramson Cancer Center at the

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, presented the new

guidelines at an educational session at the 2010 ASCO meeting on June

6th. The presentation was titled " Exercise Testing and Prescription for

Cancer Survivors: Guidelines from the American College of Sports

Medicine. "

Schmitz, whose previous research reversed decades of cautionary exercise

advice given to breast cancer patients with the painful arm-swelling

condition lymphedema, led a 13-member Amer ican College of Sports

Medicine expert panel that developed the new recommendations after

reviewing and evaluating literature on the safety and efficacy of

exercise training during and after cancer therapy.

" We have to get doctors past the ideas that exercise is harmful to their

cancer patients. There is a still a prevailing attitude out there that

patients shouldn't push themselves during treatment, but our message --

avoid inactivity - is essential, " Schmitz says. " We now have a

compelling body of high quality evidence that exercise during and after

treatment is safe and beneficial for these patients, even those

undergoing complex procedures such as stem cell transplants. If

physicians want to avoid doing harm, they need to incorporate these

guidelines into their clinical practice in a systematic way. "

For decades, doctors have been telling cancer patients to take it easy

and rest and avoid too much physical activity. Such advice was similar

to the advice doc tors still often give to cancer patients about

avoiding supplements and other items that boosted cellular and overall

health. In part, such advice may have been due to the longstanding

practice of trying to use chemo drugs to beat cancer by lowering

cellular activity and " starving out the cancer " . Since chemo drugs also

weaken major organs, it may have been felt that exercise was risky for

hearts weakened by chemo.

However, it has since been established that regular exercise is

extremely beneficial for heart attack victims because it strengthens the

heart after a heart attack and lessens the risk of further problems.

Now, heart attack victims are routinely told to exercise. If the new

guidelines are any indication, a similar trend may develop for the

advice given to cancer patients.

Exercise also improves the circulation of the blood and its immune cells

which neutralize pathogens in the body. The better immune cells

circulate, the more efficient the immune sys tem is at locating and

eliminating viruses and diseases such as cancer which are trying to

attack your body. Regular exercise also reduces insulin levels, which

creates a low sugar environment that discourages the growth and spread

of cancer cells. Lowered sugar reduces the risk of developing cancer and

having it return once you have beaten it.

Physical exercise has been shown to be particularly beneficial against

colon cancer. Physically active adults experience about half the

incidence of colon cancer as do sedentary adults. In addition to

lowering insulin levels, exercise also lowers prostaglandins and bile

acids which may encourage the growth and spread of cancer cells in the

colon. Exercise also improves and speeds up bowel function resulting in

waste having less time to be in contact with the colon's mucosal lining.

It's also believed that exercise triggers programmed death of cancer

cells via the process of apoptosis.

Sources included:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100601124131.htm

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/uops-ncg060110.php

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,593874,00.html