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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Med Paediatr Oncol 2009; 30(02): 61-70
DOI: 10.4103/0971-5851.60050
REVIEW ARTICLE

Exercise in cancer

P Rajarajeswaran
College of Physiotherapy, Mother Theresa Post Graduate and Research Institute of Health Sciences, Puducherry - 6, India
,
R Vishnupriya
College of Physiotherapy, Mother Theresa Post Graduate and Research Institute of Health Sciences, Puducherry - 6, India
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Abstract

Physical exercise has attracted increased interest in rehabilitation of oncological patients. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature and summarize the evidence of physical exercise in preventing cancer, its ability in attenuating the effect of cancer and its treatments and to provide guidelines for exercise prescription Review of recent literature by electronic search of MEDline (Pub Med), Cancer lit, Cochrane libraries, CINAHL were done using Keywords and the variables were identified and systematically evaluated. There is strong evidence for reduced risk of colorectal and breast cancer with possible association for prostate, endometrial and lung cancer with increasing physical activity. Exercise helps cancer survivors cope with and recover from treatment; exercise may improve the health of long term cancer survivors and extend survival. Physical exercise will benefit throughout the spectrum of cancer. However, an understanding of the amount, type and intensity of exercise needed has not been fully elucidated. There is sufficient evidence to promote exercise in cancer survivors following careful assessment and tailoring on exercise prescription.

Keywords

Exercise - cancer - prevention - rehabilitation


Publication History

Article published online:
19 November 2021

© 2009. Indian Society of Medical and Paediatric Oncology. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.)

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