Previous studies having shown that the practice of sport helps to avoid the risk of recurrence of cancer, researchers from the University of Tel Aviv (Israel) have taken the research further. They thus discovered that physical exercise, and more particularly high-intensity aerobic training, prevent cancer from spreading and greatly reduce the risk of metastasis.
“Exercise demonstrates a higher level of cancer prevention than any drug or medical intervention to date, but we can now explain how aerobic activity can maximize prevention of the most aggressive and metastatic types of cancer,” they said. Professors Carmit Levy and Yftach Gepner, main authors of the study published in the journal Cancer research.
Exercise deprives the tumor of the sugar it needs to grow
Concretely, physical exercise creates a sort of protective metabolic shield: by increasing the consumption of glucose (therefore sugar) of the internal organs, it deprives the tumor of the energy necessary to spread. “This positive effect is similar to the impact of exercise on other diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
The study combined an animal model in which mice were trained on a strict exercise regime, with a human model, from an epidemiological study of 3,000 people followed for about 20 years. The epidemiological study had shown that there was 72% less metastatic cancer in participants who practiced regular high-intensity aerobic activity, compared to those who did not practice any physical exercise. And these results were confirmed by the mouse study.
An exercise-induced metabolic shield in distant organs blocks cancer progression and metastatic disseminationEurope PMC, November 2022
