Lymphoma patients see significant gains in health from aerobic exercise regimen: study

A healthy dose of exercise is good medicine, even for lymphoma patients receiving chemotherapy, says Kerry Courneya, Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Cancer in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta. The Healthy Exercise for Lymphoma Patients trial, a three-year study led by Courneya, published last month in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found that a regimen of aerobic exercise training produced significant improvements in physical functioning and overall quality of life benefits in patients with lymphoma. Researchers recruited 122 patients with Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, then classified participants by disease type and treatment status, whether they were undergoing chemotherapy at the time or receiving no treatments. Participants were randomly assigned to an exercise program designed to maximize cardiovascular fitness or to usual care, which did not include an exercise component. “The exercise program consisted of interval training,” said Courneya. “We had patients ride the bike at a modest intensity, interspersed with high-intensity bouts of exercise, where they would go full out, exerting maximum effort for a minute or two at a time, then rest for a few minutes before doing it again. That type of interval training has really been shown to maximize improvements in fitness.” Exercisers trained three times a week for 12 weeks and were encouraged to stay the course with behavioural support techniques that

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