You probably won’t think that moderate to vigorous exercise would be a tool in the fight against cancer. Well, it turns out you’d be wrong. There’s a new way of looking at exercise combined with drug therapy and how combining the two can fight cancer.
There’s an
antibody therapy using a drug called rituximab The
drug is used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The researchers decided to combine
this with exercise and got some amazing results.
The way rituximab
works is it attaches itself to a specific protein on the surface of a cancer
cell. Natural killer cells in the body are then able to recognize the drug attached
to the cancer cell so that the body’s killer cells can attack and destroy the
cancer cell.
So…what if I told
you this increased the number of natural killer cells by an amazing 254
percent. You read that right – 254% and it occurs right after the patient has
simply finished doing 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise!
There is a
secondary benefit that occurs from doing this kind of exercising. It turns out
that the number of cancer cells present in blood samples increased immediately after
exercising. Since cancer cells attempt to hide in the body so drugs can’t get
them, this resulted in the natural killer cells being able to find and destroy more
of the cancer cells.
The bottom-line
result is that the rituximab was twice as effective at killing cancer cells. A
great Win/Win for fighting cancer.
While I tend to
attempt to keep drug use to a minimum, if you are diagnosed with this disease,
lace up you running shoes and run, run, run!
(Reported Bottom Line Health, September 2024)
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