Dr. Kerry Courneya

So this sort of old straightforward question, does exercise help with cancer?

you know, sort of was in the days of independent of any other treatments.

Now that all these other treatments are being given to these patients, we have to think about exercise in a little more sophisticated way about when and how we combine exercise with these other treatments that patients are receiving.

Yeah.

So a cancer diagnosis is a very difficult time.

These patients can be overwhelmed and very stressed to find out you have cancer.

And then they're learning what type of cancer, what stage of cancer they have, what's the grade of cancer.

And then the oncologist is talking about all these treatments.

We're going to give you six months of chemo, and then we're going to put you on hormone therapy.

So it's a very overwhelming and difficult process.

And so we have to look at, you know, what's the opportune time to present exercise to these patients and help them intervene.

But I think many patients tell us that cancer makes everything feel abnormal.

They lose control.

It's just the cancer has taken over.

And many of them feel that exercise helps them maintain control, helps them feel normal.

So once they kind of settle in the initial shock and realize they have cancer and they're in for these series of treatments, many of them start looking for...

can I do to help myself?

Yes, I've got to show up and get all these treatments, but what can I do to potentially benefit myself?

And when they start looking into the literature, exercise is one of these things that they're quickly seeing is potentially very beneficial for them, not just for the disease itself, but yeah, many of these sort of side effects, symptoms, quality of life issues that they're going to face, the declines in physical health and mental health.

And I think once they start seeing these cancer-specific benefits, cancer patients aren't motivated to increase their VO2 max or their muscular strength.