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Exercise Boosts Breast
Cancer Recovery Time
Exercise, already shown to help prevent breast
cancer, can also help women recover from surgery and other breast
cancer treatments, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
While
the instinct may be to lie low and rest up, in fact it is better
to get up and move, even doing strength training, the researchers
found.
Breast cancer patients who exercised with a trainer after
surgery, chemotherapy or radiation treatment felt better and
stronger, and their immune systems appeared healthier, than women
who rested, according to the study released at a Department of
Defense breast cancer meeting in Philadelphia.
“We have some evidence that exercise can help stimulate some
of the cells in the immune system and help repair some of the
damage done by chemotherapy,” study
leader Andrea Mastro, a professor of microbiology and cell biology at Pennsylvania
State University, said in a telephone interview.
“This wouldn't be specific to breast cancer patients,” she added.
Mastro's findings go against the common wisdom of both women
and their doctors.
“It interested me that some of the women we approached said,
'Oh I don't know — my doctor said I should just take it easy
for a while,'” Mastro said.
For their study, Mastro's team studied female breast cancer
patients ages 29 to 71, among them 28 who exercised regularly
with a personal trainer and 21 who continued their normal, sedentary
routines.
“We wanted to include some resistance exercise because we had
some evidence from healthy young women that resistance exercise
could stimulate the immune system but we didn't want these women
to have to go to a gym,” Mastro said.
The women did warm-ups and stretches, 15 to 20 minutes of strength
training with exercise bands, and 15 to 20 minutes of aerobic
exercise such as walking on a treadmill or a using a stationary
bike.
The other women continued their normal routines, which may
have included a little walking but usually not even that.
“Most of the women had the same chemotherapy followed by radiation
therapy, and most reported doing little if any regular exercise
before diagnosis,” Mastro said.
After three months the women filled out questionnaires about
their health and how they felt.
“They (exercisers) showed increased quality of life,” she said. “Their
social well being was higher and they were less fatigued.”
The exercisers had an overall average quality of life test score
of 101.4, compared to 93.9 for the non-exercisers.
Cancer patients often show raised levels of compounds such as
interleukin 6 or gamma interferon, which are inflammatory agents,
in their blood. The exercisers had a quicker decline in the compounds,
Mastro said.
Immune system cells called CD4 helper T-cells, which are damaged
by chemotherapy, started to divide faster in the exerciser group,
Mastro added.
Mastro's study fits in with several others, including a report
published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association
by Harvard Medical School researchers who studied 18 years' worth
of data from 3,000 breast cancer patients.
The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command's breast
cancer research program has received more than $1.8 billion to
date from Congress for research.
Worldwide, nearly 1.2 million women and men will be diagnosed
with breast cancer this year. In the United States, breast cancer
will kill 40,000 people this year.
Reference
Source 89
June
9, 2005
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