In news that gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘Run for your lives!’, a study finds that high intensity exercise could greatly reduce the risk of cancers spreading.
Researchers from Tel Aviv University found 72 per cent fewer metastatic cancers – cancer that has spread to another part of the body – in participants who regularly engaged in high intensity aerobic activity.
The genesis of the new study came from Professor Carmit Levy, associate professor of human molecular genetics and biochemistry at Tel Aviv University. During the course of her regular research, she began to consider the concept of muscle being resistant to metastatic cancer.
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From there, the seeds of the new study, published this month in online medical journal Cancer Research, were sown.
“We said, ‘Okay, there’s something about the activity of the muscle that maybe protects this organ from being a common site for metastasis for all types of cancers’,” Prof. Levy said in an interview with Medical News Today.
The next step involved harvesting the data of 2734 men and women who had participated in a prospective study conducted by the Israel Centre for Disease Control and the Israeli health ministry.
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Participants, aged 25 to 64, were free of cancer at the start of the study. Over 20 years, they were examined before and after 30-minute treadmill running sessions, and completed physical activity questionnaires about their exercise habits.
Participants reported the number of times per week and average time they devoted to activities such as walking outdoors or on a treadmill, jogging, swimming, bike riding or stationary cycling, light exercise (e.g, yoga), body shaping and strength training.
Of the 2734 participants, 243 developed new cancers over the 20-year reporting period, and analysis of the data showed a mild correlation between exercise and preventing the onset of cancer, but a strong link between exercise and the spreading of those cancers.
How does exercise help fight cancer?
That was a key question posed during the study, and the researchers developed the following hypothesis: “Based on our data, we hypothesise that exercise reprograms the tumour microenvironment via the development of a stromal metabolic shield that protects the stroma from metastatic colonisation by challenging cancers’ metabolic demands.”
So what does that actually mean? In lay terms, as explained by Dr Erica Rees-Punia, senior principal scientist in epidemiology and behavioural research at the American Cancer Society, high intensity exercise ‘reprograms’ our organs to require more nutrients – in this case, glucose.
“At the same time,” says Dr Rees-Punia, “healthy organs of exercisers are more easily able to outcompete cancer cells for nutrients. This leaves fewer nutrients available for the tumour to use to grow.”
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Basically, exercise feeds your muscles and thus denies food to tumours.
The results of the study support another study involving mice, which found that mice subjected to exercise prior to being injected with cancer cells were “significantly protected” against metastases.
So, if you’re an exercise fiend, this new study provides further reason to maintain your activity levels as you age. It should also motivate ‘couch-dwellers’ to get into some high intensity exercise.
Do you do regular high intensity exercise? Will the findings of this study inspire you to do more? Why not share your thoughts in the comments section below?
I run 6 days a week – about 40km in total. I am 70. I am very happy to read this research.
I must add – far too many people who could exercise, do NOT. Sad.
Why are people not commenting?