Physical exercise is a “pill for every day” that helps prevent multiple chronic diseases, cancer included. So explained it Soraya Castle, director of the first oncology exercise unit in Madrid. Sport is one of the healthy habits that reduces the risk of various types of cancer by one third. But its influence is even deeper: in case of developing a tumor, the practice of aerobic training would avoid even seven out of ten cases of metastasisaccording to a new study from Tel Aviv University (Israel).
As explained by the researchers from the Sackler School of Medicine who have led the work -Carmit Levy from the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry, and Yftach Gepner from the School of Public Health and the Sylvan Adams Institute of Sports-, intense aerobic exercise increases glucose consumption by internal organs, which reduces the energy availability for the tumor to metastasize. That translates to a decrease in the risk of metastatic cancer of up to 72%according to the article published in Cancer Research.
“Previous studies have shown that physical exercise reduces the risk of certain cancers up to 35%. This protective effect also occurs against other diseases such as cardiovascular diseases or diabetes. The general recommendation is: If you are active, you are healthy“, value the authors. “With this new work we add a new dimension: the aerobic exercise of high intensity, that obtains the energy of the sugar, can maximize the prevention of the risk of metastatic cancer, the most aggressive, up to 72%”.
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To determine this, the researchers combined an animal model – laboratory mice trained under a strict exercise regimen – with data from human volunteers in good health and examined both before and after running. These participants belonged to an epidemiological cohort study that has followed about 3,000 people over approximately 20 years. And in this group, those who frequently engaged in high-intensity aerobic activity had 72% fewer metastatic cancers compared with the sedentary.
The mouse model demonstrated similar results, which allowed us to identify its underlying mechanisms. By examining the organs of active mice before and after exercise, and after inoculating them with cancer, they found that aerobic activity significantly inhibited the development of metastatic tumors in the mice. lymph nodes, lungs, and liver. The researchers hypothesize that the result is the result of the enhanced rate of glucose consumption induced by exercise.
“Our study is the first to investigate the impact of exercise on the internal organs in which metastasis usually occurssuch as the lungs, liver or lymph nodes,” explains Professor Levy. “By examining their cells, we discovered a increased glucose receptors after high-intensity aerobic exercise, much like what happens in the muscles. This makes it possible to turn them into effective energy-consuming machines, which compete with the muscles for sugar and deprive the metastasis of the resources it needs.”
This situation in which cancer cells do not find enough energy to reproduce without control can become “permanent”, adds Levy, if the practice of exercise is frequent throughout life. “By examining internal organs in our study, we found that exercise changes the entire human body, prevents cancer from spreading and decreases the size of primary tumors“.
The high intensity exercise is characterized by short intervals but high energy expenditure. “If the optimal range for burning fat is 65-70% of our maximum heart rate, to burn sugar must reach 80-85% even briefly,” explains Gepner. A simple way to achieve this would be to run a sprint for one minute, walk and sprint again. “This is how athletes used to train in the past, but now we also apply it to exercise routines in cases such as heart and lung rehabilitation“.
The recommendation for the prevention of cancer in healthy people, therefore, is to add high-intensity sessions to general sports activity. “There is something that we must underline, and that is that the Physical exercise, with its unique metabolic and physiological effects on the body, is the most effective method of cancer prevention that we have at the moment, above any other medication or medical treatment”, concludes the specialist.