A decade or so ago, it was thought that cancer patients should focus on rest to allow their body to heal from treatments.
There's been a big shift that thinking since then, and a new study from the University of Rochester’s Wilmot Cancer Institute confirms the idea that exercise can help patients with some of the symptoms of chemotherapy.
Patients who took part in an at-home walking and gentle resistance training program reported significantly fewer symptoms of neuropathy than patients who had chemotherapy alone.
An estimated 25 percent of cancer patients experience neuropathy. It’s associated with specific chemotherapy regimens that include platinums, vinca alkaloids, and taxanes. Sixty percent of people with breast cancer and other solid tumors who receive these drugs are expected to suffer from this side effect, which has been described as disabling.
Neuropathy causes numbness, pain, tingling and hypersensitivity to cold and heat in the hands and feet.
"So, for example, a patient with chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy might reach into the refrigerator for a drink and experience pain rated 10 out of 10; maximum pain," said biophysicist Ian Kleckner, Ph.D., the lead author of the study. Exercise somehow affects how the brain processes pain and other symptoms such as emotions, anxiety and depression. Kleckner said future research may result in individual exercise prescriptions for patients.
"We have to figure out how much exercise people need to do and how that varies by person, and then number two, we really don't know that much about how exercise works, and that's why I'm so excited to study the effects of exercise on the brain."
The study, which involved more than 300 cancer patients, was honored as a “Best of ASCO” among 5,800 abstracts at the world’s largest gathering of oncologists, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago last weekend.
