4 Major Benefits of Exercise for Cancer Patients
Exercise kills cancer cells. You know there are many different exercises for cancer patients but people do exercise for a lot of other health reasons for example for weight loss and general fitness but not a lot of people do exercise to prevent cancer or if they have cancer. To improve the outcome, I have some really interesting data that I’m going to share with you that not only shows an interesting connection but why it decreases the risk for cancer is a very interesting study after study. Quite a few studies show a major decrease in the risk of getting endometrial cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer, and gastric cancer.
Let me give you a couple of little basics to share before I explain why exercise for cancer patients will help a person in the fight against cancer.
Relation between Cancer and Mitochondria:
You need to know if cancer occurs from a normal cell, somehow for various reasons, the mitochondria become damaged and then the cell switches to flip its metabolism to the fermentation of things like glucose. So, the normal cell uses a lot of oxygen but a cancer cell in their fermentation process is done without oxygen. So, it’s anaerobic. So, we have a normal cell that uses a lot of oxygen and a cancer cell doesn’t have to use oxygen at all. It ferments things.
Cancerous Cells vs Normal cells
How do cancer cells different from normal cells? The difference between a normal cell and a cancer cell is that a
- normal cell has a lot of mitochondria but in a cancer cell there are not a lot of mitochondria. Those are damaged or not working properly.
- A normal cell has a limited lifespan and one way that the body does this is through something called apoptosis which is controlled cell death where your cells commit suicide. So, they don’t keep growing. In cancer cells they don’t get the signal to create apoptosis. So, they keep living on and on. So, that’s what apoptosis is.
Mechanism of Apoptosis in Cancer Cells
Apoptosis and cancer are two opposing things. Cancer cell apoptosis is controlled cell death in which a normal cell gets this trigger and that trigger comes from a certain type of byproduct from the mitochondria. And this byproduct comes from using oxygen and is called ross. Ross stands for “reactive oxygen species”. It’s a group of several reactive chemicals that influence our bodies in a certain way and it reacts to the body the reaction that I want to talk about is its ability to trigger apoptosis. So, ross triggers the cells to commit suicide. In cancer cells, you have a deficiency of ross, in normal cells you have an abundance of ross. So, to make this really simple the more oxygen that you can give your cells the more ross or reactive oxygen species that you have to trigger apoptosis. This is why things that have low oxygen enhance cancer. Like smoking for example you’re decreasing oxygen in the body, like an infection that’s a low state of oxygen in the body, like inflammation. So, we can say that cancer cell apoptosis is very necessary for cancerous patients in order to fight against cancer.
Why do you Think Cancer Invades in Areas of Inflammation?
Because there’s less ross to trigger the apoptosis and it can grow more. This is another reason why cancer tends to grow in areas of old injury too and if someone’s smoking and irritating the lungs that would be like micro trauma. Now, in chronic stress states, you have a lower amount of oxygen in a high glucose state. So, if someone’s a diabetic or maybe they’re consuming a lot of carbohydrates and running their bodies on sugar or carbs that are in a lower oxygen state than a state where they’re burning ketones or fat. But the next thing is very interesting;
Could Synthetic Oxidants Cause Cancer?
Why is it that when scientists do research on synthetic antioxidants like beta carotene and alpha-tocopherol which is vitamin E or the synthetic versions of these vitamins that there is an increased risk of cancer? Could it be that these synthetic antioxidants or antioxidant chemicals slower the oxygen thereby lowering the apoptosis in cancer cells?
Well, I think that’s really what occurs because the studies show that these antioxidants worsen cancer. They always use synthetic chemicals, they don’t use the natural version. So, it’s important to understand this because if you have cancer or you want to prevent cancer there are things that you can do to slow things down or hopefully prevent things.
Things Which Slow Down Cancer
Ketogenic Diet
Most people use a keto diet for weight loss. A ketogenic diet of course gets your dietary sugars weighed down. Maybe you want to do the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, that’s one thing you could do. Now, this is something I’m not recommending but the way that several chemotherapies work and even radiations are that they increase more ross which then creates apoptosis in the cancer cell but the problem is it comes with the package and creates a lot of other collateral damage and side effects. But one of the biggest things that will increase oxygen and ross is exercise.
Benefits of Exercise for Cancer Patients
1. Aerobic Exercise Increases Oxygen in the Body
Simple aerobic exercise increases your oxygen by 10 to 20 times and it can increase ross by a thousand times. So, this is just another reason to exercise to prevent cancer and again if you have cancer, you should be exercising just floods your body with oxygen. This is going to increase the byproduct ross which will help create apoptosis in the cancer cells.
2. Improves Blood Sugar and Insulin Resistance
Exercise also improves your blood sugar levels and insulin resistance which will then decrease the risk of getting cancer. If you’re exercising outside, you get vitamin D. Vitamin D has been known to decrease the risk of getting cancer as well as a certain amount of sun rays like the infrared spectrum. I’m not talking about burning yourself I’m talking about getting a dosage of sun that’s not too much just a moderate amount. So, you don’t let yourself get burned.
3. Increase the Number of Mitochondria
Mitochondria are considered the powerhouse of cells. Another thing the exercise will do is increase the number of mitochondria because cancer cells don’t have enough mitochondria to produce oxygen and the ross.
4. Improve Immune System in Cancer
Are cancer survivors immunocompromised? The thing which will increase immunity in cancer patients is exercise. Exercise will improve your immune system. It is a very important thing to help fight off cancer because there are many types of cells in the immune system that directly kill cancer cells. Immunotherapy for cancer patients is also recommended by health practitioners.
