Newsflash! Exercise is good for you!
This may seem like a statement of the obvious, so why did exercise having a positive impact on our health hit the news last week? Because it’s now been scientifically proven in a really important way. Let me explain…
Exercise improves outcomes for cancer patients
One of the elements covered extensively during my CanRehab training was the burden of proof for exercise being both safe and beneficial for cancer patients. When I first qualified in 2021, there were an increasing number of studies being published, with more research underway. My peers and I were told that patients, their loved ones, and their medical teams may require convincing of the safety and efficacy of our programming, so we were armed with some key studies that had already been published, and encouraged to pay attention to future work.
This latest research was shared at the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, and received quite a bit of attention in the international press. Why? Because it’s a big study and therefore quite compelling.
Latest published research
The study was conducted across a number of centres around the world, and involved over 800 patients, all of whom had been diagnosed with colon cancer. The number is significant – generally, we look for studies to be as large as possible in order to more conclusively prove a result. Cancer studies that aren’t about proving the efficacy or tolerance of traditional treatments – chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery – tend to have a high drop out rate. This happens for a number of reasons and, whilst some participants did drop out of this study too, there was also a high completion rate.
The other crucial aspect of this study was the international nature – the research taking place in different countries (scientifically referred to as being a “cross-cultural” study) means that a number of lifestyle factors were controlled for (meaning that a variety of cultures were studied – naturally, things like our diets, social habits, and other elements of our lives are what we call “culture-bound”; when people from just one country are studied regarding something related to health in this way, the results will be biased – even if those people represent different subcultures within their local or national culture, they will still be more similar than they are varied), and the results considered to be stronger if they are replicated across all geographical regions… which these ones were.
What do we now know?
The participants were given one of two kinds of help after their treatment – a prescribed exercise programme, along with coaching, or an information leaflet advising on benefits of various activities. There was a reduced risk of recurrence, and a lower rate of death among those who received the exercise coaching compared to those who received information only.
Some experts say that more research is needed in order to prove the findings across other cancer types, and there’s still no full understanding of why exercise is beneficial. Physiologically, we don’t understand the full impact that exercise has – how or why it seems to increase the potential for keeping disease at bay – but the trend in the data is clear. Exercise has a positive impact on health outcomes, and should be recommended to patients.
What’s next for exercise and cancer?
Whether a person’s goal is to overcome cancer treatment side effects or to maintain their general health and fitness, the million dollar question is which are the magical exercises to get them there. So there’s no doubt in my mind that some studies will focus on trying to find the optimal formula in terms of workout routine – that’s just what fitness does. In fact, there have already been some studies done trying to prove the particular efficacy of regimes such as yoga or high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
My opinion is that this isn’t the best approach – all humans are different, and there’s no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to programming. Not just because all bodies will adapt to exercise differently, and therefore results will vary, but because preference also comes into it. A standing internet joke is the “updating” of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to fit our modern world, representing the most basic “need” as things like wifi access. When it comes to fitness, it’s no joke that the most important factor in the success of any programme is adherence – if a person won’t or can’t complete the programmed exercise, it’s going to have no impact at all, so it’s kind of irrelevant finding out which exercises are “optimal” if they’re ones that nobody wants to do.
What I hope is next is that this kind of research helps both clinicians, patients and survivors to appreciate is that exercise is both safe and beneficial, and should be prioritised as both a lifestyle factor and part of treatment and recovery. Whatever happens, I’ll be keeping tabs on the progress of the science…