Dr. Kerry Courneya

Some people who have very high weight might have a lot of muscle mass and be in very good shape.

Others might have a balanced muscle mass and then others might have very small muscle mass despite these high levels of obesity.

Yeah, and that's definitely one of the explanations for the obesity paradox, and that is it's not a good quality measure of body composition.

So in our research and other research, we'll either look at DEXA scans that allow you to look at fat mass and lean mass,

But what they've done in the cancer field is all these patients are getting scans to track the tumors and these scans will go through the skeletal muscle in different places and they're able to get really good quality measures of how much skeletal muscle mass you have.

And they're the ones who have pointed out that's really what's driving these survival rates is this low muscle mass, which also drives low physical functioning and poor quality of life as well.

So I think, you know, in the cancer field,

muscle mass and strength training are turning out to be critically important.

Well, the recommendations for the 150 moderate intensity exercise minutes per week is above and beyond sort of what we call background activity, just sort of what you might do over the course of a day.

So getting up and moving around is important, but it's not a replacement for a structured exercise program.

The way I think of it is I view those types of things where you're getting up, standing around, you know, parking at the far end of the parking lot and walking in or getting off the bus stop a stop early to get a little bit of walking in.

I view those kind of as activity supplements.

to be added to a good quality exercise program.

And just the same way when you talk about nutrition, you know, you don't live on nutritional supplements, right?

You want a good quality, healthy diet, and then you might take a nutritional supplement depending on health issues.

So at the core of exercise is a good quality structured exercise program, combining aerobic and strength exercise.

And then on top of that, yes, getting up and moving around, not sitting for extended periods of time,

And building activity into your day, I think, are also important.

There's a little bit of research supporting it.

It's not as strong as the moderate to vigorous intensity exercise.