Dr. Kerry Courneya

You mentioned treatment tolerance, which is your ability to complete these treatments.

Very, very important.

Every cancer patient learns very quickly that I need to get all of these drugs that I'm supposed to get and I need to get them on time.

If the oncologist has to reduce the dose of those drugs or delay them, that increases the chances of recurrence.

In other words, it reduces the chances of being cured.

So the last thing oncologists want to do is sort of reduce these drugs or delay them.

But if the side effects are so bad, they have to do that.

Some of these patients, the side effects are so bad, they can't complete these treatments.

So early on when we were looking at exercise, the concern was that we might interfere with patients' ability to complete these treatments, that we're going to make it harder.

You know, we're piling on this exercise on top of all these side effects where they're sick and nauseous and diarrhea and vomiting and so on.

And so some of these studies have actually shown that it's the patients who exercise during chemotherapy that end up completing more of their chemotherapy.

They have fewer reductions in the chemotherapeutic drugs and fewer delays.

And that portends a better outcome, a higher chance at cure and a lower risk of recurrence.

So that's been a huge finding that's very motivating for patients.

And then ultimately, this link to survival.

Does it reduce the risk of recurrence?

Does it improve survival?

We have a growing amount of research.

Preclinical studies in the animal models looking at exercise and tumor growth and spread, but also these epidemiological studies showing that cancer patients who report more exercise seem to have a lower risk of recurrence of the disease and a lower risk of dying from cancer.

the cancer many years down the road.