Exercising Your Options
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a physical therapist explains how exercise can benefit some patients as they battle and recover from cancer.
Studies show that exercise can benefit cancer patients, but intense treatment regimens often leave them too fatigued. What’s a patient to do? The Key caught up with Andrea Venetz Eisgruber, Virginia Tech, owner and physical therapist at Core Concepts Physical Therapy and Pilates in Westminster, Maryland, to find out more about exercise programs to combat fatigue and improve the outcome for patients during and after the dreaded “big c.”
How can exercise affect a cancer patient’s recovery?
Regular physical activity in cancer survivors is linked to increased life expectancy and can help decrease body weight and body mass index. The higher the BMI, the higher the risk for cancer and its recurrence. Getting survivors to exercise is critical in keeping body weight down and decreasing risk factors. How do you put the right exercise …show more content…
Exercise can help combat the feeling of fatigue. There is a vicious cycle between fatigue, decreased activity levels and deconditioning. It’s a tough cycle to break, but finding motivation for that survivor, pairing them with another survivor, working during times of day when they have more energy, exercising in short bouts throughout the day, monitoring exercises and modifying them to something they can do and still feel accomplished—all of these things can help.
Can people who were physically active before their diagnosis pursue the same physical activities they en-joyed before diagnosis?
Absolutely! Most survivors are able to participate in physical activity while being treated or after they have complet-ed treatments. Exercise programs reintroduce survivors and their bodies to a level of activity they may not have seen for some time. The goal is to get back to a previous level of functioning or specific activity.
—With Kristen Desmond LeFevre,
—
a physical therapist explains how exercise can benefit some patients as they battle and recover from cancer.
Studies show that exercise can benefit cancer patients, but intense treatment regimens often leave them too fatigued. What’s a patient to do? The Key caught up with Andrea Venetz Eisgruber, Virginia Tech, owner and physical therapist at Core Concepts Physical Therapy and Pilates in Westminster, Maryland, to find out more about exercise programs to combat fatigue and improve the outcome for patients during and after the dreaded “big c.”
How can exercise affect a cancer patient’s recovery?
Regular physical activity in cancer survivors is linked to increased life expectancy and can help decrease body weight and body mass index. The higher the BMI, the higher the risk for cancer and its recurrence. Getting survivors to exercise is critical in keeping body weight down and decreasing risk factors. How do you put the right exercise …show more content…
Exercise can help combat the feeling of fatigue. There is a vicious cycle between fatigue, decreased activity levels and deconditioning. It’s a tough cycle to break, but finding motivation for that survivor, pairing them with another survivor, working during times of day when they have more energy, exercising in short bouts throughout the day, monitoring exercises and modifying them to something they can do and still feel accomplished—all of these things can help.
Can people who were physically active before their diagnosis pursue the same physical activities they en-joyed before diagnosis?
Absolutely! Most survivors are able to participate in physical activity while being treated or after they have complet-ed treatments. Exercise programs reintroduce survivors and their bodies to a level of activity they may not have seen for some time. The goal is to get back to a previous level of functioning or specific activity.
—With Kristen Desmond LeFevre,