Stretching the Odds
How many of you exercise every day? Do you walk for an hour? Do you go to the gym? What about swimming?
Exercise has become the thing to do if you want to live long and stay healthy. Health experts like to connect a regular exercise routine with lowering the chance of heart disease. They say it helps the control of diabetes and of course, they’ve come around to cancer and exercise.
It just seems logical to me that working out and burning calories is going to give you a better chance at staying healthy than sitting on the couch eating chips and guac. Common sense has got to come into play here. Eating and sitting and eating some more is going to put pounds on your bones and open the window for something bad to begin to work it’s way into your body.
I’d much rather the folks in the lab coats continue to work on the genetic connection to cancer. I’d like them to keep searching for ways to strangle malignant tumors so they can’t grow anymore. How about finding the next way to treat cancer, something that would take the place of chemotherapy?
Exercise and less cancer, it sounds like a good fit. But let’s not lock up the labs just yet.
November 4, 2011 @ 6:22 pm
I’ve been active all my life. I started running in high school and competed in track and cross country for my college team. To this day, I still continue to run, and I teach fitness classes (spin).
When I was diagnosed, my dr said that was no reason why I should have cancer. I didn’t have the risk factors (never smoked, hardly ever drink, eat a healthy diet, and maintain a healthy weight). Genetic link? I have a limited family health history. (My mother was from the Czech Republic and was the only member who immigrated to the U.S. The surviving members of her family do not speak much English. I do know that one of her brothers died of cancer when he was about 45- though I don’t know the type of cancer. I also know that my maternal grandmother died of some kind of intestinal problem. They said her large intestines were blocked. Cancer? No way to know since that was in the 1940’s. In my father’s family, in his generation there was some cancer (lung, melanoma, lymphoma) but that’s as far as we can go back). And it wasn’t too long ago that people didn’t talk about having cancer.
So the report that being inactive can possibly cause cancer- well it can cause a lot of other health problems too. I think viruses may be one key to finding a cure. A virus can change a person’s DNA and they know it can cause diseases like HIV, and some cancers already have a viral link (cervical cancer). Keep working scientists and researchers- there’s still work to be done.
November 4, 2011 @ 1:22 pm
My favorite conundrum of my own cancer experiences is that I was diagnosed with cancer #2 after complaining of a minor exercise-related injury 12 years ago. It is highly likely that the growth of the cancer allowed the injury to happen.
The folks in the lab coats had better keep working, for I know that I – and so many others – would be dead without them.
November 4, 2011 @ 10:43 am
I have exercised regularly, 3-5 times per week, for most of my life and will continue to do so as long as my body will allow. Exercise didn’t stop cancer for me, eating the right foods, taking the right vitamins, having a drink or a glass of wine, getting regular checkups and screenings, etc……all of this I did and I do. No impact on cancer that I can see or feel.
It just seems fashionable to have a headline about doing “this or that” and it will reduce your chances of cancer. I say BULL! If the guys and gals in the white coats knew this for sure and could prove it, then we’d be closer to finding the real cause and cure.
In our celebrity world, a headline with the word cancer in it garners all of the attention….. “How I almost had cancer. Read the real story.” Sadly, the real people with cancer continue their daily fight in the hope that the treatment will work and allow NED to visit Hope the white coats continue their work and come up with something soon.