Health Industry Research (Personal Project for 5.22.10)

1. The actual tasks you completed: What got me going on this particular reasearch this week was reading an article in Forbes magazine about the people who have miraculously survivied cancer. The belief was that they got an inffection of some sort, which caused their immune systems to really kick into gear. Which in turn killed the infection along with killing the cancer. There is a lot of research about this currently. Many cancer patients are now being presecribed immunine system boosters. I researched how exercise benefits in preventing cancer and once you do have cancer.


2. The progress you made toward your desired outcome: I made good progress. It was interesting to me that certain types of cancer are almost cut in half through exercise.


3. The lessons you learned: I really enjoyed this topic. It was so facinating to me, and would be a great way to market to those who have cancer, or that cancer runs in their families.

Cancer Prevention Through Exercise

Can exercise beat cancer?
Simply keeping active as a teenager is the new hope in preventing breast cancer. Simon Crompton reports

“Some scary figures were released last week: the number of women with breast cancer has risen by 81 per cent in the past 33 years. Although breast cancer death rates are also falling, the statistics are deeply worrying for women, not least because scientists says that it’s hard to pin down the exact cause of the rise.
However, a more hopeful message will emerge at the National Cancer Research Institute Conference in Birmingham next week. The conference will hear that there is something women can do to reduce the risk of breast cancer: exercise.
Professor Leslie Bernstein, the chair in cancer research at the University of California, will draw on 20 years’ research into the effect of exercise on breast cancer rates and will conclude that young girls can significantly reduce their risk of developing breast cancer as they get older if they exercise regularly in their teens. And both pre-menopausal and post-menopausal adults can improve their odds of staying clear of the disease by keeping active.

Her research indicates that exercising over a lifetime seems to have the strongest protective effect; young women who exercise for just four hours a week over their entire reproductive years experience more than a 50 per cent reduction in breast cancer risk. But exercising in adolescence may be particularly crucial; another of her studies showed that breast cancer risk was reduced by 30 per cent among women who exercised for two hours or more every week during their teens. It all gives extra cause for concern over Britain’s couch-potato youth.”
(http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article662341.ece)

Cancer Active

DAILY light to medium exercise was of significant benefit to cancer patients. We had already seen a review from Bristol University of the top 50 studies in the world on exercise and cancer. This concluded that people who took exercise developed less cancers. And people with cancer who took exercise survived longer.
This ´longer survival´ was borne out in several specialist studies over the last 12 months. Women with breast cancer who do daily exercise survive 50 per cent longer, than women doing none appeared in three studies in Cancer Watch.
(http://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=183)

What to Know with Exercising with Cancer?

Avoid Exercise if:
• Your hemoglobin is below 8.0 g/dl
• Your platelet count is less than 20,000 you may need to take special precautions.
• For servral hours before you have labaratory work done.
• Until the day after IV Chemotherapy.
• If you ever have a fever.
• If you have a new onset of pain.

(http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/PatientEd/Materials/PDFDocs/dis-cond/cancer/fatigue-exercise.pdf)
Exercise Helps Patients Beat Colorectal Cancer
By Katrina Woznicki, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today
Published: December 14, 2009
Reviewed by Dori F. Zaleznik, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston and
Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planne


Men with nonmetastatic colorectal cancer who exercised regularly were less than half as likely to die from the disease as sedentary patients, researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported.
Patients whose exercise habits fell into the highest category showed a 53 percent lower colorectal cancer death rate (adjusted HR 0.47, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.92, P=0.002 for trend), and a 41 percent lower death rate overall (HR 0.59, 95% CI 0.41 to 0.86, P<0.001) than men who exercised the least
The benefits accrued regardless of patients' age, disease stage, body mass index, year of diagnosis, tumor location, and prediagnosis physical activity status, the researchers reported.

(http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/ColonCancer/17526)