For the most part, medical science has always been on the same page with regard to the benefits of exercise and the preventative effect it has on many illnesses and afflictions. Not until recently, however, has there been a myriad of studies that are showing where exercise has a direct impact on cancer fighting mechanisms in the body especially boosting the immune system.
Recent research done at the Copenhagen University Hospital, however, discovered a direct link between exercise, the production of the adrenaline hormone and the warding off of cancer cells. The researchers took two separate groups of mice. Both were given injections of cancer cells. One group remained stationary and locked in their cages while the other group was allowed to move around and even exercise on their little running wheels.
After that exercise and non-exercise part of the experiment, the scientists gave all of the mice certain chemicals that are medically known to incite cancer cells and produce live cancer in the body. The results came in with 75% of the mice in the non-exercise group developing full blown cancer but only around 25% in the exercise group developed operable cancer.
In addition to the lower cancer rate for the exercise mice, the size of the tumors in the exercise group were 60% smaller than the cancer tumors in sedentary group. Not only were the tumors smaller in the group that exercised but the tumor contained twice as many cancer fighting chemicals and cancer killing cells than did the tumors of the sedentary mice.
Adrenaline, it seems is the key to fighting the cancer cells. Exercise triggers the production of both adrenaline and interlukin 6. The adrenaline fights the cancer cells while the interlukin 6 is vital to targeting the cancer cells with the adrenaline. When the researchers injected the non-exercise group with the interlukin 6 and the adrenaline, that group developed the same cancer fighting ability as did the exercise mice.
Exercise can also reduce the amount of inflammation in the body which is one of the leading triggers for cancer as well as heart disease and other damaging afflictions. Exercise, too, has the ability to replicate healthy cells. Exercise can also raise the production of dopamine which is yet another of the body’s chemicals that can attack and shrink cancerous tumors.
Finally, exercise does, indeed, look to help prevent and even fight cancer. Scientists have agreed though, and many studies bear them out, that more gentle forms of exercise have a higher value on the cancer fighting than does more vigorous forms of exercise.
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