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Exercise increases number of immune cells in cancer patients
- DantesKite 3y agoMakes sense. Metabolic processes and immune pathways are closely interlinked together (such as through the mTOR pathway). Activate mTOR and you get the signal for T cells to proliferate as well as muscle growth, especially in the context of hypertrophy.
- iskander 3y agoSurprise twist: it's lymphoma
- lockhouse 3y agoDiet, exercise, enough sleep, and a good social support structure are pretty much the keys to good health in general. The fact that we have so many health issues in western society are because its so easy to neglect these things.
- markus_zhang 3y agoThese are luxuries, not mandatories. That's why many people don't get them. They can't. I absolutely can't.
- dingusdew 3y agoThey are only that way because our society treats them as luxuries instead of baseline "these are needed to properly take care of yourself." Apparently only the rich deserve things like this, according to US society. You know, rich folks like Steve Jobs who definitely listen to their doctors and their support networks and definitely don't fall for quacky bullshit that means they die from a totally manageable type of cancer.
- t-writescode 3y agoI have to disagree. That Western Society has systemically chosen to redefine them as luxuries and has forced its residents to treat them as luxuries, rather than the obligation for a healthy human experience that they are is a major source of the harm we experience every day. We need to return to considering and treating them as the mandatories that they are or else we will continue to experience the cost of neglecting them, just like neglecting Vitamin C results in scurvy.
- ianlevesque 3y agoNo, no, everything is a personal failing. Pull yourself up by those bootstraps. What externalities?
- jimbob45 3y agoCouldn't agree more. Seems like a lot of people on here think that low-income earners eat off of the McD's dollar menu by choice.
- t-writescode 3y agoI absolutely don't think that. I think that company owners, share holders, "The Economy" have decided that low earners don't deserve healthy lives; and that many of those low earners have been tricked into agreeing that it's best to live "under foot" and that those things are luxuries. It would be like cheering a factory on for all the missing arms its employees have, and then having all the factory employees mock the newcommers with two arms trying to protest losing an arm only to have the tenured ones laugh at them and think that's privilege. We've brainwashed generations of self and systemic harm
- 10xDev 3y agoYou forgot to add good genetics.
- ericmay 3y agoThose help but are completely out of your control.
- eikenberry 3y agoHopefully not for long.
- lockhouse 3y agoYeah, I can’t wait to live in a real life version of Rapture from the BioShock series. ;-) I’m looking forward to Incinerate and Telekinesis myself.
- pengaru 3y ago> You forgot to add good genetics. Too many people lean on "bad genetics" as a scapegoat for their laziness/poor choices/lack of self-discipline...
- mtalantikite 3y ago"good genetics" (if we can even say that) might help give an edge for elite athletes, but really, for most able bodied people, it's not a factor you should be thinking about when it comes to exercise. Just get out there and use your body, it's amazing.
- ActorNightly 3y agoIts even simpler. Exercise (specifically, aerobic type) is the main thing you need. A good exercise regime gives you a lot of leeway in the diet aspect especially if you don't overeat (since your caloric burn will be high enough on the regular to not have to deal with issues like too much carbs). It also helps you sleep as you get tired and can fall asleep easier, and reduces stress levels, which is very important in regards to longevity. There also have been studies that link brain function deterioration with lack of oxygen, and people with higher VO2max values are at a lower risk of cognitive decline. Something as simple as cycling to the office instead of taking the car can have extremely positive effects.
- Swizec 3y agoDon’t forget all the evidence suggesting adult neurogenesis specifically from running. As for VO2max, Levitt had a longevity researcher on his podcast who found that a high VO2max (used as a proxy measure) is causally related with higher impacts on 5 year all cause mortality than smoking. In the good direction. As in: being in shape reduces your risk of death more than smoking increases it. Sauce: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/adding-ten-healthy-years-to-your-life/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/adding-ten-healthy-years-to...
- swalling 3y agoIt's not just a longterm effect of VO2max improvements, which is a physiological metric that is quite slow to improve and realistically has upper limits based on your age and sex. It's also that aerobic exercise acutely improves brain function. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9256523/#:~:text=There%20is%20evidence%20that%20acute,89%5D%E2%80%93%5B92%5D https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9256523/#:~:tex...
- o_____________o 3y agoFigured that would be Peter Attia. https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/ https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/ His podcast is amazing but can be dense and technical at times. He's evidence based and would probably fit in with the HN crowd.
- pengaru 3y ago"Social support structure" is often at odds with diet, exercise, and enough sleep.
- lockhouse 3y agoIt is absolutely critical to good mental health and having healthy coping mechanisms for stress. Social support structure doesn’t necessarily mean staying out all night drinking and partying with your friends like a college student. It can also mean spending quality time with your family, neighbors, and acquaintances that you share hobbies and activities with.
- elijaht 3y agoNot sure about that. A few social activities are negative (nightlife, eating out maybe), but most seem to be neutral to me (hanging out, gaming, religion), and it's pretty easy to find positive activities (walking/hiking, sports, climbing).
- sysadmindotfail 3y agoLife is a series of endless choices. I recently ran a 24hr relay. There were absolutely those who drank/partied while they participated. They posted slower times and probably slept less. I didn't sleep as much as usual (because I was waking up to run every 6hrs), but I slept more, didn't party, ran faster than them. Neither of us was right/wrong in our choices. I would have felt like crap if I had their habits, but maybe it doesn't affect them.
- borbulon 3y agoI was walking 10+ miles every day when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer, which means it was growing pretty much the entire time I was exercising. It’s not just Diet, exercise and sleep (and proper eating). Some of it is just plain luck.
- robinsord 3y ago[dead]
- pazimzadeh 3y agoI'm sorry to hear that. Theoretically, it could have progressed faster if you hadn't exercised?
- ericmcer 3y agoSorry that sucks and is doubly frustrating when you are doing everything right. Sort of the inverse of Richard Overton who would chain smoke cigars and drink Irish coffee well into his 100s.
- Wonnk13 3y ago34 year old triathlete here: colon cancer spread from my colon to my lung. That said, I do think continuing to do some amount of exercise during chemo definitely helped me recover, if not just stay sane mentally. I'm about to have surgery to remove part of the lung and tumor and my surgeon/oncology team is making me wear a fitbit for three months to study my recovery.
- borbulon 3y agoWhat did you do for exercise? Do you mind me asking what your chemo was? Was it mutation-specific? Good luck with the surgery!
- Wonnk13 3y agoI was on Folfirinnox + Avastin. 2 week cycle with three actual days of chemo, five shitty days and then a recovery week. Exercise was really dictated by my port surgically put into my right peck. After about four weeks I could deadlift, squat, all the compound lifts + run,bike,swim if I had the energy. The surgery was supposed to be VATs, but the tumor was so large it turned into a general thoracotomy. It's fucking brutal. Easily the hardest thing i've had to do in life so far. But I'll get through it because there's no other choice. Forward. :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 3y agoAnd you don't need a gym membership or expensive equipment or any training for exercise. Even a tiny amount can make a huge difference. If you're currently doing no exercise, try to walk five minutes at lunch time each day. Just five minutes. And when that's trivial to do, make it 10 minutes. Try to keep increasing this over the year. No rush. Take your time. But try to make it a habit. Even if some days it's back down to just 5 minutes. If you're walking even just 15 minutes a day when you weren't before, you will be so much better off in ways that will be apparent. You might find that you feel happier, more alert, in a better mood overall. You might sleep a bit better. etc. I'm not saying that a 15 min walk is a panacea that will cure all ills, but it's a multivitamin that works.
- Xeoncross 3y agoA lot of people don't realize that muscle use helps pump blood. Movement is important for helping circulation.
- Silverback_VII 3y agoYeah but a 15min walk will get you nowhere.
- cowmoo728 3y agoOr, if you're working in a multi story office or apartment, take the stairs instead of the elevator. It seems silly but it actually makes a big difference to go from mostly sedentary to walking up stairs.
- agumonkey 3y agoIt's because western culture jumped the shark long ago. Half of every longevity tips is basically "no modern life". Eat fresh, few, move a lot, sleep a lot, talk a lot.
- selimthegrim 3y agoFew what?
- agumonkey 3y agoEat few, in general. Don't force your body to store fat you won't need. Even proteins, I just learned that unused proteins will be converted to fat. Also, if you agree that gut microbiome is important, try to eat foods that will be benefitial to them, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota-accessible_carbohydrates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiota-accessible_carbohyd... (another thing I discovered recently). Then there's fasting and autophagy but it's a bit harder (I'm just starting IF and it requires a bit of dedication tbh)
- swagasaurus-rex 3y agoImproving the odds is a great idea. But it's naive to think these are cures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Fox was in better shape than most people despite having lost a leg to cancer. He died age 22.
- rixary 3y agoLittle weird to reply with a specific incident. I didn’t see anywhere this was broadcasted as a cure.
- bradlys 3y agoThe top comment is currently saying that diet, exercise, and a good social network are basically a cure-all to all issues in western society. I'm being a bit reductive but so is the comment.
- minsight 3y agoThere is a wide gulf between "pretty much the keys to good health in general" and "a cure-all to all issues in western society"
- biotechbio 3y agobioscience phd student. Why is this interesting? Tl;dr from the article, they used flow cytometry to quantify different cell populations in the blood, and noted that the proportion of CD8+ T cells (cytotoxic, the kind of immune cells that recognize and kill cancer cells, among other things) increases after exercise and returns to baseline 30 min later. Claiming that this supports the idea that cancer patients could benefit* from exercise is a pretty big overstep of scientific inference. * = in the immune response to their cancer
- gavro 3y agoMedical doctor. This is exactly what I thought. There's simply not enough here to say if it's just an interesting artefact of exercise or an actual helpful response. It may be a useful starting point for further studies, but the comment section is frightening in how quickly people are jumping on this to confirm their biases on health and disease. If we were to extrapolate from this logic, we would wrongly conclude that people with autoimmune diseases should never exercise.
- Aune 3y agoIf they return to baseline in 30 minutes, was there even an increase to begin with? What is the mean lifetime of those cytotoxic cells, and would one expect such a decay in so short a time? I understand that it is a very dynamic system but 30 minutes seems very short to me. So is the return a die-off or where do they go?
- biotechbio 3y agoThe lifespan of T cells varies from months to years (memory T cells). T cell development begins in the bone marrow and continues in the lymphatic tissue and periphery. During their lifespan, these cells circulate in the body and migrate based on chemical gradients. What happens when you exercise? Blood pressure increases, blood vessels dilate. I honestly would not be surprised if what these authors observed was just existing T cells in capillary beds being kicked up into circulation, only to adhere and begin to intravasate a couple minutes later.
- make3 3y agoIt would be nice if we could find what triggers the body's improved condition when doing exercise, and trigger it maximally without having to do hours of repetitive nonsense. It's fine if you like to do it, but a lot of us obviously don't. I wonder how the progress is going in this sphere.
- algoatecorn 3y agoBut exercise yields more benefit than just cancer prevention. Don't you want to maintain strength and mobility as you age? Sleep better? Build mental and physical resilience? I'll wager that we won't see a substitution for exercise and its benefits. Ever. It's just part of human life, and embracing it is by far the healthiest mindset.
- make3 3y agoI'm saying, all of these. Why are they "body moving fast" activated?
- algoatecorn 3y agoBiology is complicated. If we start digging for mechanistic underpinnings, we'll uncover thousands of genes, variants, expression levels, metabolic pathways, epigenetic factors, etc etc etc. None of which will result in a cure-all pill or method to replace exercise and all its benefits. Just not gonna happen unfortunately
- make3 3y agowho's to say.
- Freeaqingme 3y agoI understand where you're coming from. Recently I read someone saying that "it's just like brushing your teeth, it's what your body requires in order to keep functioning properly". That rang a bell with me. After all, I suppose pretty much everyone on HN brushes their teeth at least twice a day. That's also something that you need to build into your routine, somehow. The same goes for exercise. If you build up routines that involve exercise, then it should become easier over time as habits are formed. Something that doesn't help in that regard is cities where car use is almost unavoidable for basic stuff. Ideally, you'd live somewhere where schools and shops are near the places where people live, and the streets are designed so it's safe to walk or cycle. Then you could get some exercise simply by dropping off the children at school or doing some grocery shopping. Street design also isn't some natural phenomenon but something that city councils can make conscious decisions on, so none of it is a given.
- _xerces_ 3y agoResearch paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-33432-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-33432-4
- pazimzadeh 3y agoIt would be good to know how it affects various subsets of lymphocytes. Does it boost immunosuppressive lymphocytes, i.e. Tregs? Could the transient boost result from a boost in Tregs which actually chase inflammation that is caused by exercise?
- stainablesteel 3y agoim not surprised i've always opposed the "you're sick therefore you should rest" advice, your lymph nodes are mechanical pumps, maybe you shouldn't go run 10 miles or do heavy lifting but definitely walk around or ride a bike if you feel up to it
- birdyrooster 3y agoalways opposing this advice is draconian and incorrect because resting is the correct advice for many ailments
- martyvis 3y agoCorrect. rest is as important for recovery as exercise. gentle exercise, ie walking, to your energy capacity is good. Your brain also uses energy. I registered some domain names and obtained a business number during the wee hours yesterday ( not everyone is excited by this, but I can't really control my enthusiastic brain). I definitely need more rest than exercise at this point. I'm using my smartwatch to track my "body battery" which is helpful.
- nradov 3y agoThere are very few ailments for which complete bed rest is a good idea. Unless the patient is in an ICU or something it is almost always beneficial to get up and move around as much as possible. This prevents muscle atrophy and helps keep circulatory, lymphatic, and digestive systems working normally. If you disagree then please provide medical journal citations.
- JoshTko 3y agoInteresting exception is that there have been a number of anecdotal reports of aerobic exercise during Covid recovery being a major contributor to chances of getting long Covid.
- bakemawaytoys 3y agoWhen I was undergoing chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin's lymphoma, I tried to keep up some exercise but it was just too difficult. I ended up needing to take a drug to boost my white blood cell production so that treatment could continue. White blood cells are produced in your bones and this drug made it feel like every bone in your body was broken. It was awful. Had I known this at the time, I probably would've forced myself to ride my indoor stationary bike every day if it would've helped avoid that immune booster drug.
- ramoz 3y agoI take the same injections, but further take Claritin as recommended and I’ve not experienced any bone pain. I’m also younger so that may play a factor, idk. I workout before & after chemo days (later days I’m mostly just walking to get 10k steps). Off weeks I’m cycling and lifting.
- martyvis 3y agoProbably filgrastim. I have had a daily shot the last 6 days.
- Findecanor 3y agoInteresting. I'm about to start chemotherapy in a month or so, and I've been told that I'm supposed to get it injected while pedalling on an exercise bike. Could it be for the same reason as mentioned in the article: better distribution of the cancer-fighting thing to where the cancer is?
- martyvis 3y agoMy cancer centre only delivers chemo while ina comfy recliner. They encourage gentle exercise each day. For me this is walking with my dog and wife, and maybe a little safe DIY. I have low platelets and WCC at the moment so can't afford to do anything to rigourous.
- nradov 3y agoLance Armstrong still did hard training rides between chemotherapy sessions. While his reputation is tarnished by doping and legal disputes, if you look at his case purely from a medical standpoint it indicates that more rigorous exercise could benefit some cancer patients depending on their overall state. (I am just making a general comment, not about your particular case.) https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1999/jul/18/focus.news2 https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1999/jul/18/focus.ne...
- ramoz 3y agoTo be fair Lance largely benefited from cisplatin chemistry in his chemo mix —- which is highly effective in treating germ cell tumors. This effectiveness is limited to only certain cancers such as TC.
- martyvis 3y agoI am currently lying in hospital after a so far 7 night stay. I am post chemo for Hairy Cell Leukaemia treatment that commenced 17 days ago. I am doing well enough but it's a struggle. ( I previously was successfully treated for the same chronic condition 9 years ago). My normal weight is around 80kg (I'm a 59yo male). I think I got down to 79kg prior to treatment this time - we actively sought exercise in the prior weeks through bushwalking, walking my dog and just general DIY stuff at home. I certainly this chemo campaign a lot fitter than the first time. Post the first 5 days of chemo this time I dropped a kilo - it's hard to maintain appetite. Managing the fever that got me hospital admission meant that I have to take in a lot of fluid via IV. I reached a quite bloated 83.5kg only 2 days ago. I then shed 1.7kg in 1 day (no vomiting involved) - I'm sure this is pretty hard to achieve through normal gym work. My goal yesterday for today's weigh-in is 81kg. Though my nurse just told me she administered 500ml (so 0.5kg overnight). I'm guessing being down to 81.4kg is more realistic now. I couldn't exercise much yesterday as I was also taking onboard a weekly chemo infusion. Hopefully I'll be able to do some laps of the hospital ward balcony with my trolley as I did two days ago. I definitely exercise in hospital (walking) as much as my capacity allows.
- toolz 3y agokeep at it! I hope you come out the other end a survivor and a stronger person! You'll certainly have earned it.
- sn9 3y agoA lot of the daily fluctuations in weight, even in just everyday life for people not in hospitals, involves changes in water weight rather than actual changes in the tissue mass. For example, I regularly fluctuate +/- 3lbs or so around my true weight over the course of a day. Looking at daily values can give a distorted picture, but if you use those daily weighings to average into weekly numbers, you can track changes.
- paxcoder 3y ago[dead]
- Fnoord 3y agoBless you, martyvis. Thank you for sharing your story.
- martyvis 3y agoAs a chronic leukaemia patient (twice chemo campaign treated - currently in middle of one) I'd like to see this study done on my group. I have certainly tried to be fitter in advance of current treatment that started 17 days ago.
- mym1990 3y agoFor anyone interested further in this topic and generally the four horsemen(t2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease), the book Outlive by Peter Attia is a very good general overview of factors that affect each, how medicine will need to evolve to a more preventative stance to move the needle on these diseases, what biomarkers are being discovered for these diseases. His general stance is that by the time someone is diagnosed with any of these, it is far too late to have sustainable, effective treatment for many. Its not exactly a short read, but is very eye opening.