Battling Cancer through exercise

you are likely to have now, or in future. The ongoing question I have is whether fitness itself could actively promote health over disease?

This is a complex debate with too much to cover in one article. Instead it is the overall focus of this blog. The focus today is on cancer and a theory I have that fitness itself gets the body to actively fight diseases like cancer. I feel the lack of evidence simply reflects a lack of research and a lack of appreciation of the importance of activity in daily human life.

There is growing evidence that exercise helps cut cancer risk. The exact reasons are not yet clear. For example recent research shows that exercise may suppress cancer by producing a chemical called SPARC. There is also evidence that high insulin levels encourage cancer because the insulin receptors on cancer cells use a high insulin environment to absorb blood sugar and grow.

What we know is that exercise forces our bodies to be at their best. The rigours of exercise trigger processes in the body that remove weak cells. There are many ways we know this but the most simple is that exercise is used to make us stronger in many ways. We use it to go further, lift more and go faster. To do this we need to move in some way and the movement itself challenges the body. The bodies response is to improve the body so it can overcome the challenge. This is what evolution has given all species including us.

We are in a different era of history. No longer is activity and starvation common, it is the opposite. Activity and starvation are rare because we are wealthy, atleast in the west. We move less now than ever and so we are physically weaker than ever and we constantly have spare energy and cell building nutrients. Numerous studies have borne this out. Surely there is a link between this weakness, plentiful nutrients and diseases that are common in the west.