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According to an Australian study, physical exercise would have a direct action on the side effects of radiotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer. Sport would make them more tolerable on a daily basis.
Nearly one in nine women will be affected by a diagnosis of breast cancer in her lifetime in France. Many patients will receive radiotherapy treatment. If the method obtains good results in addition to surgery, it is also often the cause of side effects that are difficult to live with, and in particular fatigue in the patient. To overcome these effects, many complementary treatments are possible. But according to a study from Edith Cowan University in Australia, the simple fact of keeping a regular physical activity would better manage the side effects. The discovery led to a publication in Breast Cancer.
A sports routine to get better
The Research Institute included 89 women in the study, 43 of whom completed a 12-week home program, including a weekly exercise regimen of one to two resistance training sessions, and a cumulative 30 40 minutes of aerobic exercise (nothing very strenuous, really). The other patients were a control group that did not participate in the exercise program.
Researchers found that patients who exercised recover faster from cancer-related fatigue during and after radiation therapy compared to the control group. In addition, they found that it significantly increased quality of life after radiotherapy and that no adverse effects of exercise were reported.
A simple and inexpensive method
For the first author of the study, Professor Rob Newton, the discovery is important in this context of fairly frequent cancers: “Home resistance exercises and aerobic exercises during radiation therapy are safe, feasible and effective in accelerating recovery from cancer-related fatigue” he confirms. In addition, a protocol carried out at home is excellent news for patients, “because it is inexpensive, does not require “physical” travel or supervision, and can be performed at a time and place chosen by the patient”did he declare.
In addition, the authors explain that national cancer guidelines already recommend moderately intense aerobic exercise for 30 minutes a day, five days a week as well as 8 to 10 resistance exercises two to three days a week, but only doses of Exercise even lower than recommended may already have significant effects on cancer-related fatigue.
This method would also have another positive point: the patients who saw less significant effects from radiotherapy continued their routine well beyond the 12 weeks of the study. They will thus be able to take full advantage of physical activity as a factor in the prevention of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes…