Fighting Cancer with Exercise - Strength for Life

What if you heard that exercise has a 50% reduced risk of recurrence? That exercise reduces treatment related fatigue? Reduced nausea?  Well, YES – it does all that and more.

The accepted treatments for cancer are chemo and radiation – and they are working.  What the cancer patient may not be told to do is exercise.  In 2010 the American College of Sport Medicine changed their guidelines from “bed rest is best” to “avoid inactivity”.  Since that time, there have been numerous studies on the benefits of exercise through treatment and recovery.  It is gaining momentum but may not have filtered to your medical team yet. Exercise is known to increase the efficacy of your chemotherapy – you can use less of the drugs for the same result. Exercise does reduce fatigue, one of the prominent side effects of chemo; and nausea.  And I believe if you experienced these side effects you would do anything to relieve yourself of them. And you can – you can choose to move.

We are not asking you to train for an extreme event – although maybe we are – your life! Baby steps, small changes – awareness of your body and proactive decisions you can make every day.  If you can only walk to your mailbox, do it! Tomorrow you will go further.

Have you had physical therapy?  Ask you medical team to prescribe PT – we see a major difference with those who have had sessions of PT prior to joining our classes.

‘Believing you can’ is the first step and knowing your body and accepting your limitations is key. Knee problems – how about bike riding?  Relegated to a chair – lift those arms, straighten those legs and contract the muscles.

You can do this!

Again, there are many studies and many of them are on aerobic conditioning.   Today, there are more studies on resistance training.  Have you seen those resistance bands?... inexpensive and effective.  You can achieve a full body workout with those bands, and progress to different strengths.

Are you fearful of lymphedema?  You can exercise safely, by alternating upper body and lower body exercises you keep the flow of lymphatic fluids reducing the chance of a flare-up. 

Below is a testimonial of one of our survivors:

“Under the watchful eye and careful instructions of an excellent personal trainer, I began rebuilding the muscles that were weakened by four months of chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. There were several other cancer survivors in the group; we met once a week for eight sessions, and together we struggled with both our physical limitations and our emotional healing from the dreaded disease called "Cancer".

Strength for Life is a nonprofit organization providing FREE exercise classes and wellness retreats to cancer patients/survivors on LI.  Please visit www.strengthforlifeNY.org or call 631-675-6513.