First-hand recovery experience
A breast cancer survivor herself, Carolyn Kaelin, MD, MPH, FACS, knows the importance of exercise to recovery. Along with Reebok, she developed an educational exercise DVD to aid other women going through and recuperating from cancer treatment and surgery.
As a breast cancer patient undergoing treatment, a woman may experience the undesirable shift in body mass index from muscle to fat weight— called sarcopenia. The average 40-year-old American woman gains fat and loses muscle as she ages. A breast cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy may gain a decade's worth of fat in one year, as shown in this illustration.
(Illustration reproduced from Reebok's Cancer Survivor's Guide to Fitness DVD)
"The vast majority of breast cancer patients survive their diagnosis and live their full life expectancy," says Dr. Kaelin, a breast surgeon and director of the Comprehensive Breast Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and on the faculty at DFCI. "However, weight gain may shorten a woman's life or increase her chance of a cancer relapse. Even if a woman's weight stays the same as before therapy, as a cancer patient undergoing treatment, she may experience the undesirable shift in body mass index from muscle to fat weight (the medical term is sarcopenia). These factors make exercise critical."
The average 40-year-old American woman gains fat and loses muscle as she ages; in a single year, a breast cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy may gain a decade's worth of fat. Breast cancer treatment has other potential side effects—a decrease in shoulder range of motion and osteoporosis—that can be reduced through exercise.
Although rest aids healing, Dr. Kaelin urges patients to take advantage of windows of time when they are feeling well enough to get up and exercise. Walking is a great way to start.
"Patients are focused on getting through treatment. They may not realize all the changes their bodies are going through," explains Dr. Kaelin. "We are educating our patients about how exercise will help them recover shoulder flexibility and upright posture after surgery, minimize chemotherapy-related fatigue, nausea and vomiting, and bone loss, and improve long-term survival through weight control and other methods."
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