Can exercise help with chemotherapy? Researcher seeking volunteers

Chemotherapy will make you feel awful, and can even have an impact on your long-term health, but a Dalhousie University researcher thinks exercise might help with both.

Anthracyclines are an effective class of chemotherapy drugs for the treatment of breast cancer, but they have side effects beyond the miserable feeling they leave you with in the short term.

"They have a very negative effect on heart health that can increase the individual's risk of heart disease once the cancer has been cured," said Dr. Scott Grandy, a breast cancer researcher based at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

"So we want to get [patients] doing aerobic exercise in an effort to decrease that negative impact on the heart."

Grandy has already completed a hospital-based study, but his number of subjects was limited by the difficulty some patients had in getting to the hospital to perform the exercises. He has secured funding from the Canadian Cancer Society for a second study, which will be home based.

Side benefits

The results from the initial study were positive, he said, and not only for apparent improvements in heart health.

"Even though they felt quite bad coming in and didn't want to exercise, by doing it it actually made them feel better," said Grandy.

"Typically individuals that are on treatment and are exercising will report that they have lower levels of fatigue, they have lower levels of side effects."

Grandy is currently recruiting volunteers for the follow-up study. Vigorous exercise is not required, he said. Any exercise that raises the heart rate would qualify, even going for a walk around the neighbourhood.

He is looking for people who have been recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

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