{"id":10103,"date":"2025-03-18T12:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T04:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/?p=10103"},"modified":"2025-03-18T12:16:26","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T04:16:26","slug":"keeping-fit-and-building-muscle-could-increase-survival-rates-in-cancer-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/keeping-fit-and-building-muscle-could-increase-survival-rates-in-cancer-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping fit and building muscle could increase survival rates in cancer patients"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Physical fitness and increasing muscle strength could reduce the mortality rate for cancer patients by between 31% to 46%, new research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has found.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 20 million new cancer cases were reported in 2022, with 9.7 million cancer deaths reported world-wide during the same period, with experts expecting the trend to increase in the coming decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ECU PhD student Mr\u00a0Francesco Bettariga\u00a0noted that in healthy adults, physical fitness and muscle strength has been associated with a 21% reduction in all-cause mortality, as well as a 15% reduction for cardiovascular disease mortality, and a 27% reduction for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease mortality.

Mr Bettariga\u2019s\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0has found that both muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness had a significant impact to lower the risk of all-cause and cancer-specific mortality in patients with any form of cancer and stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur research found that anyone can benefit from higher muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness to have reduced mortality. But when we did our sub-group analysis, we found especially positive findings for those patients living with lung cancer and digestive cancer,\u201d Mr Bettariga said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIncreased muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness had also significant potential to extend the lives of people living with advanced stage of cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Bettariga said that while physical fitness was beneficial to everyone, increased muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness after a cancer diagnosis would still deliver results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn practical terms, if a person is diagnosed with cancer and only starts exercising to increase their muscle strength or cardiorespiratory fitness levels after that diagnosis, they will potentially extend their survival and reduce their mortality risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He noted that cardiorespiratory fitness could be particularly increased by aerobic exercises like brisk walking, running, swimming or cycling, while muscle strength could be enhanced by the adoption of resistance exercise programs, including the use of dumbbells, barbell and weight-machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe guidelines are that people should be exercising at least three to five days per week. They can do between 75 minutes and 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise a week, or around 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cResistance exercise training can be done at least twice a week, and would need to incorporate at least two or three sets of each resistance exercise, consisting of around 8 to 15 repetitions each at moderate intensity at least.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Mr Bettariga said the results from his research underscored the importance of clinical practitioners assessing the physical fitness of cancer patients as part of the process of predicting survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMoreover, from a practical perspective, implementing tailored exercise prescriptions to enhance muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness throughout the cancer continuum may contribute to reducing cancer-related mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone can benefit from higher muscle strength and cardiorespiratory fitness to have reduced mortality. But there are especially positive findings for those patients living with lung cancer and digestive cancer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[802,2269,20],"class_list":["post-10103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness-2","tag-exercise","tag-mental-exercise","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10104,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions\/10104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}