Dr. Kerry Courneya

So the patients that we work with who exercise before diagnosis, they believe in the benefits of exercise.

They're aware of the benefits of exercise.

It's not hard to convince them to try and exercise during treatment once you explain it to them.

For patients who have never exercised,

You know, walking in as they're about to start chemotherapy and talk about exercise doesn't seem like a good time to start exercise when you've not been exercising all your life.

So again, this is where the support of the oncologist, the oncology nurses, and the whole cancer care team are really important to say exercise isn't an add-on.

You know, it's a critical part of your cancer care.

It's really going to help you with these treatments.

So some of it's just the education and the awareness of the role of exercise in these newly diagnosed patients.

And also letting them know we can start with something that's realistic and feasible for them.

I mean, some of them are scared because they think exercise is lifting heavy weights and high-intensity exercise and they're about to start chemo.

And letting them know that starting even with walking program can be very beneficial.

And then we're seeing a big growth in community-based exercise programs for cancer survivors.

We have Live Strong at the YMCA, which is a program being rolled out across the U.S.

where you can go and work for it with an exercise specialist specifically working with cancer survivors.

And many of these cancer centers have fantastic exercise programs.

MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, Dana-Farber in Boston.

A lot of the top cancer treatment centers now have exercise specialists working right at the cancer treatment center offering these programs to patients who are newly diagnosed.

So there's a bunch of things that are going on to try and help patients.

You know, the big concern in the U.S.