There seems to be a lot of encouraging news about the effects of exercise on cancer survival these days : ) Hot on the heels of a recent study showing that exercise reduces the risk of death in breast cancer patients by 50%, comes a study from the Cancer & Leukemia Group B (CALGB) showing the first strong evidence that daily exercise may improve survival in stage III colon cancer patients, cutting the risk of recurrence or death by 40% - 50%.

According to the American Cancer Society:

The CALGB study included over 800 men and women, ages 21 — 85, diagnosed with stage III colon cancer (cancer that had spread beyond the colon to a few nearby lymph nodes but had not yet spread to other organs). After having surgery, all participants in the study went on to receive adjuvant chemotherapy, which is designed to help protect against a cancer recurrence.

…When researchers checked the participants’ health between 2 and 3 years later, those who reported doing moderate physical activities on a regular basis had cut their risk of cancer recurrence or death by 40% — 50% compared with the less active study members. This benefit held true despite differences in age, gender, height, or weight.

If these findings are confirmed, people with colon cancer could gain a new method to help lower their risk of recurrence — a method that is under their own control and has many additional health benefits. Meyerhardt’s research suggests survivors would need at least 6 hours per week of moderately-paced walking at 2 — 3 mph.

…In the study, other activities that were linked with better survival rates included at least 3 hours per week of jogging (at a pace slower than a 10 minute mile), tennis, swimming, calisthenics, and using a stair-stepping machine.

These findings may still need to be verified by other studies, but it’s obvious to me anyway that we are fast approaching a time when Oncologists may actually be able to start prescribing exercise as part of overall cancer treatment, and cancer patients, who until now have been told that they have no control over their disease, might truly begin to influence their own prognosis in a meaningful & fairly easy way…exercise!

Technorati Tags: Colon Cancer