Colon cancer survival soars with regular exercise, shows study that ‘astounded’ experts

A three-year exercise programme improved survival in colon cancer patients and kept the disease at bay, a first-of-its-kind international experiment showed. With the benefits of the programme rivalling some drugs, experts said cancer centres and insurance plans should consider making exercise coaching a new standard of care for colon cancer survivors. Until then, patients can increase their physical activity after treatment, knowing they are doing their part to prevent cancer from coming back. “It’s an extremely exciting study,” said Dr Jeffrey Meyerhardt of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, in the United States, who was not involved in the research. It is the first randomised controlled trial to show a reduction in cancer recurrences and improved survival linked to exercise, Meyerhardt said. Prior evidence was based on comparing active people with sedentary people, a type of study that cannot prove cause and effect. The new study – conducted in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States – compared people who were randomly selected for an exercise programme with those who instead received an educational booklet. “This is about as high a quality of evidence as you can get,” said Dr Julie Gralow, chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). “I love this study because it’s something I’ve been promoting, but with less strong evidence, for a long time.” The findings were featured at ASCO’s recent annual meeting in Chicago, in the US state of Illinois, and published by the New England Journal of Medicine. Academic research groups in Canada, Australia and the UK funded the work. Researchers followed 889 patients with treatable colon cancer who had completed chemotherapy. Half were given information promoting fitness and nutrition. The others worked with a coach, meeting every two weeks for a year, then monthly for the next two years. Coaches helped participants find ways to increase their physical activity. Many people, including Terri Swain-Collins, chose to walk for about 45 minutes several times a week. “This is something I could do for myself to make me feel better,” said Swain-Collins, 62, of Kingston, in the Canadian province of Ontario. Regular contact with a friendly coach kept her motivated and accountable, she said. “I wouldn’t want to go there and say, ‘I didn’t do anything,’ so I was always doing stuff and making sure I got it done.” After eight years, the people in the structured exercise programme not only became more active than those in the control group, but also had 28 per cent fewer cancers and 37 per cent fewer deaths from any cause. (There were, though, more muscle strains and other similar problems in the exercise group.) “When we saw the results, we were just astounded,” said study co-author Dr Christopher Booth, a cancer doctor at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, in Canada’s Ontario province. Exercise programmes can be offered for several thousand dollars per patient, Booth said, adding it was “a remarkably affordable intervention that will make people feel better, have fewer cancer recurrences and help them live longer”. Researchers collected blood from participants and looked for clues tying exercise to cancer prevention, whether through insulin processing, building up the immune system or something else. Swain-Collins’ coaching programme ended, but she is still exercising. She listens to music while she walks in the countryside near her home. That kind of behaviour change can be achieved when people believe in the benefits of exercise, when they find ways to make it fun and when there is a social component, said paper co-author Kerry Courneya, who studies exercise and cancer at the University of Alberta, in Canada. The new evidence will give cancer patients a reason to stay motivated, she said. “Now we can say definitively exercise causes improvements in survival.” Like what you read? Follow SCMP Lifestyle on Facebook, X and Instagram. You can also sign up for our eNewsletter here.

Colon cancer survival soars with regular exercise, shows study that ‘astounded’ experts

New study suggests exercise coaching should be a new standard of care for treating colon cancer patients, with benefits rivalling some drugs