W11: Cancer Flashcards
What is Cancer? Describe its mechanism and what the risk factors are? What are the symptoms?
Cancer is described as a disease of an uncontrolled spread of abnormal cells which lead to formation of tumours.
Cancer could be in the form of a benign or malignant form, where the former can grow but don’t usually spread and once removed, do not usually grow back, and the latter is able to grow and spread to nearby cells and form new tumours. There are also cancer forms that do not form tumours such as leukemia.
Cancer cells are a result of changes to genes that control cell growth and division. These genes changes can occur when errors occur during cell division, DNA damage due to exposure to external substances such as smoking, and UV, and genetic factors. Usually, our body are able to destroy cells that have damaged DNA but as we age our ability to do so becomes lackluster.
There are unmodifiable risk factors such as age and genetics, however some modifiable risk factors are, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, smoking, alcohol, exposure to sunlight, diet, some types of viral infection, and obesity.
Symptoms such as unexplained coughs, pain or changes in the area that is affected, unintended weight-loss, and blood in the stool or urine.
What might be some of the perceived barriers of cancer patients in engaging in physical activity
Fear of injury, lack of time, physical constraints, lack of awareness, low expectations.
more specifically, physical barriers can include bone health, physical constraint (lack of strength), fatigue, low immunity, peripheral neuropathy, and changes in body weight.
psychological barriers could include, anxiety, depression, self-efficacy, body-image, knowledge about physical activity, and motivation
Other exercise barriers could include, pushing too hard, age, environmental constraints, habit of sedentary behaviour, co-morbidities, surgery, cost, social support, and COVID.
Give some recommendations for exercise in cancer patients
How does physical activity act as treatment for cancer patients? and what is the mechanism. Describe using recent literature
Physical activity can be used to prevent fatigue, ease symptoms and treatment side effects, improve cancer treatment efficacy (Morielli & Courneya, 2020), prevent cancer relapse (Friedenreich et al., 2016), and decrease cancer mortality.
Furthermore, research in more specific relationships between 3 type of exercise and cancer patients outcome shows that aerobic training improves QoL, aerobic capacity, and psychological wellbeing, resistance training improves QoL, self-esteem, body strength and and body composition, mindfullness training such as tai chi, yoga improves QoL, aerobic capacity, body strength and composition, flexibility, and self-esteem. (Mustian et al., 2019)
Give some recommendations for exercise in cancer patients
What are some of the evidence about physical activity and prevention? What might be the mechanism behind it?
Individuals that engage in regular physical activity is linked to decreasing the risk of certain cancers by 10-20% compared to those engaged in lower amounts (McTiernan et al., 2018). Furthermore, there is a dose-response relationship with cancer and physical activity.
On the other hand, 9-19% of cancer cases could be attributed to lack of physical activity (friedenreich et al., 2010).
Some of the proposed mechanism behind physical activity and the prevention of cancer with strong evidence are the decrease in insulin resistance, the improvements in body composition, the increase in sex hormones, and the improvement in pulmonary function (Friedenreich et al., 2010).
