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If it were a new Superdrug that could extend the life
expectancy of cancer survivors for an extra year or two the news would be on
the front page.
Things being as they are, the latest cancer treatment only
made the Daily Mail, and will therefore be ignored.
If it doesn’t fit our narrative of a war on cancer, how
important can it be?
The news: cancer survivors who do a lot of exercise increase
their life expectancy significantly.
The Daily Mail reports:
We all
know exercise is good for us but now scientists have found that physical
exercise significantly increases the life expectancy of cancer survivors.
Men who
beat cancer and who burned more than 12,600 calories a week exercising, almost
halved their risk of death, a new study found.
The
research supports a previous study that found the most physically active
cancer survivors are much less likely to die of cancer and heart disease.
Scientists
from the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine studied 1,021 men
with an average age of 71 who had been previously diagnosed with cancer.
They
found that men who burned more than 12,600 calories per week by exercising,
were 48 per cent less likely to die than those that did little exercise and
expended less than 2,100 calories a week, Medical Express reported….
While
there has been plenty of research that shows regular exercise boosts the life
expectancy of healthy people, this study is among very few that show exercise
also extended the life of cancer survivors.
It’s news worth sharing.
3 comments:
Physical activity improving health makes sense, once you know how our lymph system works.
Our lymph system removes toxins and filters out bacteria and cancer cells from our bodies. But for the lymph system to function at all requires physical movement of our skeletal muscles.
The lymph system has no pump equivalent to the heart. The only way fluid can flow through our lymph system is for skeletal muscles to expand and contract. And the only way to make these muscles expand and contract is to physically move.
The more we move; the more efficient the lymph system can do its job.
Shouldn't that be 12,600 calories a month? That many a week is 4-5 hours a day of exercise. That is a lot of cycling or brisk walking with no days off.
My running coach has a motto "RX exercise", including cancer, and I think there's a bit of hype in it, like his claim runners age half as fast as people who are sedentary, but whatever works to motivate people I guess.
My top running effort when I was training for my only marathon was around 60 miles/week, an average hour per day. At 80 calories per mile comes out to 4800 calories/week.
A longest bike trip I took was 324 miles in four days, so that might be an extra 14,000 calories. No wonder I lost weight that summer!
Perhaps some people do intense exercise 3+ hours per day, like if their job required it, and could eat like a horse for it!
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