Cancer patients stride to health

Doctors often advise cancer patients to rest - in part because the treatments for cancer make them tired anyway - but a study published last week suggests a little walking may do a lot of good.

Even women taking harsh chemotherapy drugs that could damage their hearts benefited from walking, a team at the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre found.

"One of the concerns of the medical community was that these women would be too unwell to do it and wouldn't want to do it," says Dr Roanne Segal, who led the study.

"We underestimated what these women can do."

Dr Segal and colleagues studied 123 breast cancer patients. All were receiving treatment for early-stage breast cancer: chemotherapy, hormonal treatments or radiation.

One-third kept up a regular exercise programme, walking for an hour on their own three to five times a week.

They were compared with patients who did supervised walks in the centre - either on a treadmill or a track - and patients who rested.

After six months, the walkers had significantly improved their heart conditioning and overall function, the researchers reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Those who walked in the centre did less well than those who walked on their own.

Patients who followed the traditional medical advice of little or no exercise during cancer treatment saw their physical conditions deteriorate, Dr Segal reported.

Most of the patients were taking adriamycin, a chemotherapy drug that can have side-effects on the heart.

"The concern of the medical community was, given this drug's potential effects on the heart muscle, would there be medical effects? What we showed was that it was quite safe," Dr Segal said.

Patients who took tamoxifen, which affects the hormones and can cause weight gain, lost an average 1kg to 4kg.

"Many women are quite perturbed about the weight gain, but over and above that, there are health reasons why you wouldn't want to gain that weight."

Dr Segal said studies showed that women who gained less weight on tamoxifen actually fought off breast cancer better.

The National Cancer Institute said: "Numerous studies have suggested that exercise, including light- to moderate-intensity walking programmes, has many benefits for people with cancer.

"Such benefits include improved physical energy and/or enhanced functional capacity, with improvement in quality of life, and improvements in many aspects of psychological state."

Dr Segal said the patients in her study enjoyed the exercise, and this could explain why those walking on their own did better.

"We were slowing down many of the women in the centre, trying to get them to adhere to the exercise programme.

"At home, they frequently told us, they wanted to do more and they did more," she said, adding that 70 per cent of the patients stuck with the six-month programme.

- REUTERS