Kidney cancer patients who reported being physically active in the past month were less likely to report poor physical and mental health compared with those who were not active, according to the results of a recent study.
Dr. Daniel S. Roberson, lead author of the study and a urology resident at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, explained that cancer can affect not only the organ or system where the disease is found, but also a patient’s mental health. . also. Previous research has shown that physical activity and exercise can mitigate side effects in cancer patients, so he and his colleagues tried to find out if this was also true for kidney cancer patients.
“If we looked back at kidney cancer patients and saw that these people had improved their mental and physical health with exercise, then we used this study as sort of a starting point to… use the results of this to advise our patients, as we take care of them through their diagnosis and treatment and survival,” he said in an interview with CURE®. “But going forward, maybe (we can) design interventions, talk about programs with cancer centers and institutions to potentially help patients with kidney cancer diagnoses and mitigate some of the challenges with physical and mental health that a cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survival (come with).”
The study, which was presented at the 22nd annual meeting of the Society for Urologic Oncology, included 576 kidney cancer patients and survivors. Among them, 217 (37.7%) patients reported that they did not participate in physical activity or exercise in the last 30 days and 358 (62.3%) reported that they did.
Those who were physically active were significantly less likely to report worse mental and physical health compared to those who were not active.
Roberson explained that there are many hypotheses for why exercise might improve mental health. For example, exercise can help release endorphins (also known as happy hormones). However, there is no definitive answer at this time based on this data.
“There’s certainly more exploration that can happen in terms of that, but for some reason, we know that (physical activity) improves (the mental health of) people, and I think that’s what’s important for these patients,” he added.
The exciting notion with these results is that exercise and physical activity is something that kidney cancer patients can control and use to improve their daily quality of life, Roberson continued. But it’s important for patients to take it easy when starting out. If a patient has not exercised in a while, he will not be expected to run miles. Roberson said patients may want to start by taking walks.
“I would say that any exercise is better than doing nothing,” Roberson concluded. “But starting slow, doing something and sticking to a regimen, and just developing better habits will not only help (patients) during diagnosis and treatment, but also during survival. And we know now with the data.”
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