In September 2020, 43-year-old Esther Shaw underwent surgery to remove a tumor from her left breast. The operation, a therapeutic mammoplasty, marked the end of a six-month treatment for triple-negative breast cancer and since then the London mother-of-two has revised her lifestyle and embarked on a regimen of intensive exercise.
“I kept running throughout the chemotherapy treatment,” she says. “Since I recovered from my operation, I have been doing a lot of weight lifting and I also play netball outside once a week. I have a personal trainer, Jordan Holtom, who challenges me with three-hour sessions a week that include lots of squats and deadlifts, and I balance that between running and playing netball outside once a week.”
She is now cancer-free, but Esther says that even hearing the word “metastasis,” where cancer cells move through the body to form tumors far from the primary site, is enough to make her break out in a cold sweat.
However, she was encouraged by a recent study of 3,000 participants from Tel Aviv University, published in the journal Cancer Research in November. It found that high-intensity aerobic exercise can reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by 72 percent, compared with people who don’t exercise.
The study results have implications for all of us, not just people recovering from cancer. In a nutshell, the authors found that high-intensity exercise has a protective effect, causing organs and muscles to burn glucose more effectively, meaning cancer cells lose out in the battle for sugar.
Study author Professor Carmit Levy told the Daily Telegraph: “We wonder why cancer doesn’t metastasize to muscle – something in the muscle cells protects them. We then had the mice engage in physical activity and looked specifically at organs that typically harbor metastases: lymph nodes, lungs, and liver. After eight weeks of aerobic activity, we found that not only was the muscle getting stronger, but those organs were also modified and their metabolic characteristics changed. They had become super-organs, which were much more effective at absorbing glucose.”
The researchers then analyzed epidemiological data from 3,000 participants who recorded their physical activity for 20 years. What they found is that physical activity provided a protective effect against metastatic cancer in 72 percent. [of cases]. They concluded that the body modifies itself with long-term exercise.
.
