Exercise Helps Cancer Recovery, but Patients Must Choose the Right Type for Themselves
I have treated many patients who benefited from various forms of exercise—swimming, running, brisk walking, qigong, Tai Chi, cycling, and ball games, to name only a few. Some survived longer, some had their complications controlled, and some effectively prevented tumor recurrence. So it can be said with certainty that exercise is effective for cancer patients' rehabilitation.An important reason is that many cancers are linked to a patient's prior lifestyle. Although some ordinary people and athletes who exercise long-term do develop cancer, relatively speaking, those who long avoid exercise are more prone to chronic conditions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity and depression. So when a sedentary person is diagnosed with cancer, if he can make up his mind to change his lifestyle and exercise more, he will certainly benefit.However, patients must choose exercise suited to themselves, because exercise can very easily cause injury. I have seen patients who, seeing that others benefited from Guo Lin qigong, practiced it themselves despite a herniated lumbar disc, and ended up injuring their lower back to the point they could not walk. Others, seeing that running helped someone else, took up running despite their advanced age and degenerating joints, only to damage their joints. Such blind exercise not only brings no benefit but creates new health problems, not worth the loss. So when choosing an exercise, one must take one's own physical condition into account.Moreover, only exercise that can be sustained long-term produces lasting fitness benefits. I had a mesothelioma patient whom I advised to use weighted walking to change his constitution and control his ascites, while taking a small amount of Chinese medicine. After he had persisted for five or six years and thought he was probably cured, he stopped; the disease then recurred.Exercise is not a treatment per se but a lifestyle for maintaining health. Many patients adopt a utilitarian attitude toward exercise after falling ill; after benefiting briefly, they feel they can stop. This is wrong. People today generally lack exercise, which has greatly changed the human disease spectrum, and the prevalence of various chronic diseases related to inactivity is soaring. Only by forming a habit of exercise can we lower the probability of falling ill.If one is unwilling to stick to a single exercise long-term, several forms can be combined for fitness; combining more types is also better for health. But the weekly exercise days should be five or more, daily exercise time should be at least 45 minutes (and longer is not always better; 45–120 minutes is generally appropriate), and intensity should reach moderate or above. Badminton, swimming, cycling and jogging are all moderate-intensity activities. Low-intensity exercise has limited fitness value, but some advanced or even end-stage cancer patients can hardly perform moderate-or-above intensity exercise; for them, low-intensity activities such as walking may be considered.Along with exercise, a reasonable diet is needed. What counts as a reasonable diet? Generally, if the calories we burn each day roughly match the calories we take in from food, the diet can be considered reasonable. Patients should know the calorie content of various foods; this information can be looked up online. Obese patients, in losing weight, should even control their diet more strictly so that exercise can burn off excess body fat.So the standard of a reasonable diet differs for everyone. If a person basically does not exercise, he should take in fewer calories. If he exercises intensely every day, he can take in a little more.Among the world's cuisines, Chinese food has the highest mortality rate attached to it, because Chinese cooking uses a lot of oil and salt, and Chinese people like to eat scalding-hot food—and scalding food is a major trigger for esophageal and gastric cancer. These are very unhealthy eating habits. Relying on exercise alone without changing these dietary habits can hardly produce good fitness results.