Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Are there any sorts of programs, structured programs that can help like having a coach or group classes, things like that, that what would help for someone in that situation?

What did you guys use in the study?

With the oncologists and getting them on board, is that something, you know, you often do still hear, again, even oncologists will say to take it easy, to rest, especially if they're going to undergo, you know, they're not in active surveillance, but perhaps they're going to undergo a treatment like a

How do you sort of change the paradigm here and help perhaps a patient give the right information to their oncologist, like giving them studies?

Or what can help sort of change the oncologist from a you should rest and take it easy or just a light walk around the neighborhood to, okay, we should do some high intensity interval training classes to help with treatment?

Well, that's really good news to hear.

I want to kind of circle back to something you mentioned earlier with respect to the benefits of exercise along with treatment in cancer patients on psychological health.

And maybe you can talk a little bit about

how important these benefits are compared to maybe some of the anti-cancer benefits or perhaps even you know you have um one of the big takeaways from the erase trial was that exercise seemed to reduce the fear of progression and you know along with fear and that the stress you get stress hormones and stress hormones really can help fuel

tumor growth as well.

So maybe you can sort of talk about the psychological benefits and sort of are they uncoupled from the anti-cancer benefits.

There's been some pretty large randomized controlled trials over the years and even meta-analyses of these randomized controlled trials comparing exercise, whether it is aerobic, a lot of times running or cycling, even resistance training has been thrown into the mix, comparing them to standard of care treatments for major depressive disorder, like SSRIs, right?

And exercise as a treatment is,

It seems to work just as good, if not better, than a lot of these SSRI drugs are working for the treatment of depression, which is amazing because then you're going to get all the cardiovascular benefits, the muscular benefits, metabolic benefits, right?

Like the endless benefits of exercise in addition to the...

mood benefits, right?

So it's not that surprising to me that exercise would have a very positive effect on mental health of cancer patients, on reducing anxiety and fear, because it's been shown outside of the cancer context and other sorts of disease that are affecting the brain and mental health as well.

And also, you mentioned something interesting.

You said that exercise seems to help cancer patients feel like they have control of their lives, right?

Because I could imagine a cancer diagnosis does feel like you lose complete control of your life.