We who have our hearts and souls devoted to exercise for disease recovery, medical fitness, know not only the fun, endorphinating, energizing, beautiful physicality of exercise, but we also know the healing hands of exercise. Exercise truly holds the key to our inner magic kingdom.
Our bodies are a wonderland. Wonderland has an inner ecosystem that like any ecosystem needs to be kept in balance. Chinese medicine describes our flow of Qi. Without the flow of Qi, our life’s force, the ecosystem is jolted out of balance.
We live in a world that is constantly bombarding our ecosystem. Many times we are responsible for that attack: smoking, poor food choices, lack of physical activity… And many times we do not know we are exposed to attacks on that biochemical terrain. Enter illness and disease.
Now, what is cancer? Cancer is a genetic mutation, something has reprogrammed the “HTML” of that cell. That cell is now reproducing incorrectly. If our ecosystem is unable to shut that cell down, there is trouble.
Cancer is thought to be only 5-10% genetic. The rest is lifestyle, however, as mentioned above, our lifestyles consist of unknown as well as known carcinogens…..exposures that cause a cell to mutate.
Now, how magical are the powers of the right exercise? Exercise and nutrition are our body guards. When carcinogens attack, by empowering our body with the strongest possible biochemical terrain, one that is totally inhospitable to mutagens, we are able to fight the attacker and win.
Attackers (aka carcinogens and pathogens):
- Certain chemicals (in our food, in our air, in our meds, in our soils…)
- Viruses and bacteria
- Geophysical exposures, radiation
- Hormonal imbalances… including our big wide world of phytoestrogens endocrine disrupters
- Some nasty lifestyle choices (smoking, sitting, poor food choices, stress, alcohol…)
O
ur body depends on us to supply it with sustenance to empower the ecosystem:
- Nutrition… the right exercise optimizes our digestive system for absorption of the good and destruction of the bad
- Exercise
- Physical activity
- Sleep
- Minimize exposure to carcinogens, mutagens, pathogens
When the body is unable to fight intruders, that is when the biochemical terrain allows mutated cells, aka cancer cells, to reproduce…and reproduce……until “we have cancer”. It is believed that everyone of us have cancerous cells lurking within, our goal is that we have the defences to shut down those cells, or force what is called aptosis – cell suicide.
Front and center to the body’s defenses are our immune and circulatory systems. Our immune system is a pumpless system. In other words, it can produce all of the wonderful superheroes in the world (lymphocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, immunoglobins), but if there is no pumping action from our muscles, or no muscles, the immune system can’t do its job.
Exercise is imperative for optimizing our body’s performance. Every study shows us that exercise and physical activity are an absolute necessity for every organ system of the body, and a necessity, dare I say the “managing partner” to integrative oncology.
Exercise is vital to the destruction of cancer at every level:
- Prevention: enabling the body to kill those intrusions, to build a strong inner ecosystem
- Management: make it through treatment, minimizing risks of side effects of treatment, fighting fatigue, and many studies tell us help better respond to treatment, building back musculoskeletal challenges created by the cancer and the treatment.
- Prevention of recurrence: Rebuilding and equipping the immune system
A topic for another article is exercise at the cellular level, which is vital for prevention, recovery, and prevention of recurrence….and anti aging and anti all of our chronic illnesses… the real science geek, yes, however, this really helps us understand cancer prevention & management.
Let’s summarize
Cancer occurs because there has been a genetic mutation, a change to the genetic code. The body has been attacked..the body needs to fight the attacker.
The right exercise (stay tuned in upcoming blogs) enables the body to fight that invasion, through it’s many magical ways, some known, and we still have many ways yet to discover.
For a constant supply on recent studies on cancer prevention and recovery, please join me on Facebook.
Shira Litwack is the Director of International Relations and Master Trainer at, Cancer Exercise Training Institute and creator of Best in Health Radio.
