“Oh, not really,” she replied, “just rest.”
The results of a landmark trial published this week found that exercise can reduce the risk of cancer patients dying by a third, stop tumours coming back, and is even more effective than some drugs. The response in the press has been one of celebration: here’s an intervention that is free, widely available and has no side effects. But also one of surprise: who knew that exercise had such power?
As a naturally lazy person, who seizes on any excuse not to exercise, I took my oncologist’s advice to heart and spent over a year lying on the sofa. It was only when I started interviewing experts for my book, Reconstruction: How to Rebuild Your Body, Mind and Life After a Breast Cancer Diagnosis, that I discovered all of the evidence for exercise reducing cancer risk – particularly breast cancer.
This week’s study involved colon cancer patients but Dr Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said there was no reason to think the findings would not be applicable across other cancers. “It’s the same magnitude of benefit of many drugs,” she added. “Twenty eight per cent decreased risk of occurrence, 37 per cent decreased risk of death. Drugs get approved for less than that, and they’re expensive and they’re toxic.”
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The chemo drug that I was on for eight months after surgery caused nausea, fatigue, hair thinning, a horrible painful rash all over my skin and my nails to go yellow and start peeling away from my fingers (my big toenail came clean off). The side effects were awful, and that drug reduced my risk of recurrence by about 20 per cent.
“There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes in many hospitals across the UK to try and get exercise programmes funded for people with cancer,” says Sarah Newman, Cancer & Exercise Specialist and Founder of Get Me Back, an online fitness membership for women with cancer. “With this new data, I hope that funding for these exercise services will be prioritised to help as many patients as possible.”
As for any specific types of exercise to reduce cancer risk, Sarah says it’s more about finding a form of exercise that you like (or at least don’t hate) enough to keep doing it, rather than finding the “perfect” exercise.
Even with the knowledge of this huge incentive in terms of reducing my future cancer risk, I still found it hard to make exercise a habit. As someone who skived off PE lessons at school, I have always felt that I have neither the time nor the inclination to challenge my body or get even vaguely sweaty. You would never catch me in a gym, and the thought of a HIIT class filled me with dread.
I started with walking and built up to plodding runs around my local park. Burpees are never going to be my thing, but I found that I could handle slower strength work, with a bit of feelgood stretching, such as yoga, Pilates and barre. Eventually, as I got stronger, I started to find that I hated it less, and maybe even (whisper it) enjoyed moving my body in a way that I knew was good for me. Because obviously, the benefits are not only in terms of avoiding getting cancer again – I’m also reducing my risk of other chronic conditions like heart disease, improving bone density and bolstering my mental health.
“Great,” she said. “Keep it up. That’s probably reducing your risk of recurrence more than any drug at this point.”
So it looks as though the message is finally trickling down to medical professionals, and then hopefully out to the people who need it most: those living with and beyond cancer.
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