Episode 039: Exercise Boost Through Treatment and Recovery
Nov 20, 2018•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
I have a really special guest in Sami who is an expert in exercise and cancer who will share why exercise is so crucial during cancer, and how you can do it in a way that really helps you to get the outcomes that you want and also do it in a way that is safe and is really going to make you feel better over the long-term! Here are some things we cover today:
Why exercise is crucial during cancer treatment
Types of exercise that will help you most during recovery
Surprising fact: doing exercise saves you money on health
The key to living an active lifestyle that serves you
Simple rules of thumb for better nutrition
and much, much more!
Links
Cancer Wellness For Life
weBuild
Episode 012: Your Nutrition Needs During Cancer with Julie Lanford
Full Transcript
Joe: Sami, you know cancer and exercise, you don’t think of the two that go together. Tell me, why is exercise important during cancer and after cancer? Is it even safe?
Sami: Definitely, I’m going to address the safety thing first. The safety and feasibility studies on exercise and cancer have been going on about 15 years now. We’ve really determined that or nearly every single type of cancer, maybe some of the real rare cancers we haven’t studied in clinical trial, but the safety and feasibility has always been great. You’ll certainly see an adverse event once in a while but not very often.
I think one of the biggest things that we know about cancer and exercise is that so many of our cancer treatments, or just the experience of cancer, the more sedentary behaviour, just the lifestyle changes and also, the not feeling so good, lead people to be more deconditioned. Exercise when done correctly really helps combat those side effects. I think what’s really important for people to understand is, if they exercise, if they improve their strength, their function, it helps them reduced side effects even years after their diagnosis and treatment.
People that don’t exercise after treatment don’t always rebound the same way that somebody that exercises. Not only is it safe, I think it’s one of the most effective and under-utilised tools. I think in large part because people are scared. They’re just not sure what to do, which we understand as exercise oncology people, it is the biggest barrier that we have.
Joe: Yes, fantastic, Sami. What do you do? What sort of exercise can help you during treatment?
Sami: I think one of the most important things people need to understand is not all exercise is the same. I think that’s the exact question we ask. One thing to keep in mind is that walking tends to be the most recommended or prescribed type of exercise, but walking is really the same muscles as doing your activities of daily living or taking care of your daily activity, making food or getting dressed, etc. For a lot of folks with fatigue, it’s not helpful for them to dip in the same gas tank and use the same muscles. We’re really pushing people to resistance training, to build those strength muscles back.
Let’s say you were doing laundry, every single week, you were carrying four or five loads of laundry up the stairs, down the stairs in your house. Right, then you go through cancer treatment and what happens to that task? Well, somebody might do it for you because people want to help which is great. Whatever those lifestyle changes are, and you don’t do that laundry for maybe two months. When you go back and do that load of laundry, the first time you go walk up the stairs, it’s hard.
A lot times, those strength muscles that you don’t use, you lose, and so we really recommend a lot more of the resistance training type of exercise because that’s actually going to reduce fatigue the quickest and help people get back to their activities of daily living. Resistance training simply means overloading muscles. Standing out of your chair might be resistance tra...
