How Exercise Helps Cancer Patients
The purpose of this article is to explain how exercise helps stop tumour growth and the spread of cancer. It also provides information about why an exercise program should start upon diagnosis.
Kansas State University exercise physiologist Brad Behnke has been studying prostate-cancer tumour growth in rats that either exercise or that are sedentary. As with humans, rats divert blood flow to muscles when exercising. The result in Behnke’s research to date is a 200 percent increase in tumour blood flow during exercise (Burfoot, 2015). That sounds like a bad thing if increased blood flow increased tumour growth. However, the opposite is what occurs according to Behnke.
“When a tumour lacks oxygen, it releases just about every growth factor you can think of which often results in metastasis“. Simply speaking, the tumour says, I can’t breathe here, so let’s pick up and move somewhere else in the body.
When a tumour is bathed in oxygen its activity tends slow. In an earlier paper, Behnke demonstrated a 90 percent decrease in tumour hypoxia (low oxygen) among rats that engaged in long-term moderate intensity treadmill exercise.
Another study by a different group of researchers has shown that aerobic exercise can help tissue return to its pre-tumour state or forestall development of a more aggressive and dangerous cancer. In addition, greater blood flow and oxygen delivery to tumours can potentially increase transport of cancer-fighting therapies to tumours. In other words, exercisers respond better to radiation treatments, Behnke said.
Reference: runnersworld.com, Burfoot, Amby, 2015