Study: Exercise increases cancer survival rates
nejm.org
nejm.org
My mom was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer 11 years ago, at 59. She wasn't super into fitness when I was growing up (no time with 4 kids to raise). But ~5 years after her diagnosis, still doing regular treatments and on loads of medication, she picked up running as a hobby.
She is absolutely incredible and I'm so proud of her. But she would be the first to tell you about all of the friends she made who died of cancer, including many much younger and fitter women, and I know this is obvious but I'll say it: it wasn't because they didn't exercise, it's because they didn't respond well to treatment. She had to stop going to her support groups because literally everyone she met there had died[1]. She is so fortunate that she's responded well, enough that she was afforded the time to emerge from the shock and depression and realize that she had a lot of life left. We are so lucky that she's here with us and well enough to develop new hobbies, etc.
I do think the sort of information in the study is interesting on a population scale. On an individual level the fact is that some people will respond to treatment and others won't. The ones who do may just feel well enough to start an exercise program. If they can, it may well improve the quality of their life, and may extend your time with them, and that's an amazing gift.
I'm not sure why I felt compelled to share my anecdote. Maybe just to share what the messy human side can look like.
[1] I should note that her support group was specifically for people with a terminal diagnosis. People in any other type of breast cancer support group won't have this experience.
Exercise should be thought of like brushing teeth and other forms of basic self-care. You don't do it because you're interested. You do it because you were born into a body that needs it.
(These days I run and do bodyweight strength training a few days a week. I don't enjoy it and I certainly don't have time for it, but I sacrifice other things because it's good for me, both today and 30 years from now. (I picked these things specifically because (a) they give me the most results in the least investment in time and equipment, and (b) they get me to go outside even in not-so-great weather.))
individual cases have so many differences. Cancer is a nightmare
11 years is a incredible. All the best to you and your family
Nothing really works if you are old.
I think the biggest benefit I get from exercise is psychological. If I am having a busy day and I skip exercise to get more work time it is almost always a mistake because I wind up spinning my wheels.
For example the gut brain connection is not well understood. Links between autoimmune responses to cancer can cause all kinds of problems that can seem unrelated(an example is myotonia which appeared in one of my relatives a full year before their breast cancer diagnosis and went away after treatment). I recently read in the times an article about the discovery of another circulatory system apart from the one we have; apparently acupuncture may get a more scientific and serious look into because it interacts with that system. There is also the business of how psychiatry schools still are not teaching how to not treat the brain as if it's an isolated organ, a wholisiti approach is being only now taught in all but a handful of schools(I think this was in the economist).
They did note that the treatment-exercise group seemed to be healthier than expected in the sense that their survival was relatively high compared to typical nonstudy rates.
I personally believe that exercise is overwhelmingly beneficial and exercise every day, but there is evidence that athletes have slightly increased risk of ALS (though this may be related to something other than exercise itself, eg maybe the fields on which sports teams play have harmful chemicals, higher head injury rates, etc)
Exercise creates a lot of oxidative stress, and after a while or too much exercise your body can’t handle the oxidative stress and that’s where things start going wrong.
It's common for people that do endurance sports to actually eat pretty low quality food in order to consume enough carbs. When I'm on bike trips I will pretty much eat just about anything including candy and things like maltodextrin in water just to keep myself going when I normally wouldn't eat these things. It's definitely not good for your gut. But overall is it better than being sedentary? Yes definitely
I've been heavy for a long time despite doing a lot of exercise and the one thing that worked for losing weight before Zepbound was that time I (1) had something like a manic episode and during that (2) discovered the weird pain that had been moving between my upper back, shoulders and neck for decades was really caused by trouble with my TMJ and had six months where I just threw random foods (let's say pork loin, seaweed, carrots and turnip, it was a running gag to put together the strangest combinations I could) into a pot and blend them with an immersion blender before cooking... and it cleared up.
My nutritionist now who is supervising my weight loss is pretty happy that I'm an exerciser but I haven't been doing quite as I'd like lately because I hurt my leg practicing theranthropy [2] and have had to pace myself, like developing isolated kettlebell exercises I can do at home that work my upper body without loading my quads though I am getting better and probably could start doing more whole-body stuff.
[1] ... which I don't quite believe, once I got into biofeedback I learned how to read two-lead EKGs and I can't really make out the P-wave a lot of the time and I don't think 10 bad heartbeats out of 10^6 evaled by a computer means anything
[2] ... if you gotta know I "go out-as-a-fox" to charm people to do street photography and part of that is "walking like an animal" while carrying a heavy loadout of equipment and learning to do that without putting too much stress on my body, it didn't help at all that I tried a pair of New Balance 1080's which were the worst shoes I've ever tried, like they caused more trouble than the high-heel boots I've worn going out in drag for halloween.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23920-athlete...
like there's no doubt that exercise overall is good for you but if you're the kind of person who regularly runs marathons and does the training you are at higher risk of A-Fib and you may have all kinds of abnormal findings with the stethoscope, echocardiograms and such and... you might go to one cardiologist and they will be all freaked out and another one will think it's a nothingburger. I've been told I shouldn't do more than an hour of cardio a day: like back in my time in the wilderness when I was trying to invent ChatGPT 10 years too early and doing a gangbusters job filling the top of a sales funnel but never making sales, doing twice that helped me keep calm and sustain the effort.
Criteria was "disease recurrence, new primary cancer, or death". That would include all causes of death, including heart attacks, stroke, and all the other causes of death prevented or reduced by exercise.
My father died of pancreatic cancer and both me and my sister-in-law who was a oncology nurse were frustrated with them, wanting to keep him eating those gross protein shakes that were filled with sugar.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-024-19545-z
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7523/5/3/31
(2025)
Conclusions: This review suggests a possible association between high dietary sugar intake and increased prostate cancer risk, especially from added sugars and sugar-sweetened beverages. However, inconsistent findings and methodological limitations highlight the need for robust, prospective studies with standardized assessments to understand this relationship better.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/2017/12/high-b...
"If you have pre-diabetes or diabetes, here’s another reason to try to get your blood sugar under control: if you get prostate cancer, you are more likely to die from it."