Exercise after cancer treatment

Being diagnosed with any cancer these days isn’t necessarily a death sentence, but it certainly is life-altering. Medications and treatment protocols that will be injected into your body along with biopsies, operations and complications affect your body’s ability to muster the energy it once had to stick to a strict exercise schedule.

Some people go through several months of staging and classification depending on the type of cancer and their actual diagnosis. You can imagine that this is a huge disruption to whatever normalcy their lives may have resembled prior to diagnosis. Then come treatment options, the way forward, financial considerations, and for a little family planning. Obviously, adapting to exercise, meditation or walking seems like luxury right now, but it should be adapted with the same urgency as your treatment protocols when possible to strengthen and relieve stress.

Once chemotherapy has kicked in and hospitalizations often become necessary, exercise usually takes a backseat. Unfortunately, most hospitals do not have a system for integrating exercise into these patient treatment protocols. Even the most disadvantaged patients can benefit from moderate exercise such as walking, relaxation techniques, restorative yoga, chair exercises, light weight lifting, or some form of cardiovascular activity to help reduce fluid retention and muscle atrophy.

After coming out of the revolving door of multiple hospitalizations, the weakness in the body is immense, not to mention that many of these patients are sent home with aftercare and are still really sick and unable to care for themselves. Medical visits continue for many months, if not years. For many patients, blood injections like Neupogen and Epogen are common and painful. Regular blood level checks called CBCs are done to check the status of white and red blood cells along with other important cells that are informative to the hematologist who monitors the prognosis of cancer patients.

So when, how, and what kind of exercise does one engage in? There are cancer exercise classes popping up everywhere. Yoga classes for cancer survivors, swimming classes, movement classes, but what about a mind-body class that can address emotional turmoil along with rebuilding the body at the same time? Strengthen the mind and the body will follow!

A whole new level of fitness practitioner should be created for cancer survivors dealing with the after effects of lymphedema side effects after having lymph nodes removed to blood problems such as neutropenia or anemia, Epstein Barr, fatigue chronic or even recurrent Meningitis or Histories or Encephalitis of insulted immune systems.

These professionals will be facing more and more people with medical problems who really need well-informed guides to help ease their journey back to wellness.