Cancer and Exercise: 5 Things Every Cancer Patient Needs to Know

The other day I was surfing the web, checking out may daily dose of People.com. I wasn’t searching for anything in particular, just the latest gossip on celebs. (It’s a guilty pleasure; what can I say?) Anyway, I came upon a story about Shannon Miller, the 1996 Olympic gymnast, who went through cancer treatments for a cyst on her ovary. The story mostly talked about how she struggled with telling her young son about the diagnosis and how he would react to the news.

But, the part of the story that hit me most was the fact that she relied on fitness to help her through her chemo treatments. Most of us know that workouts can help prevent cancer, but during chemo, when your body is weak? Well, I assumed that you wouldn’t be able to work out or have any sort of regular fitness routine, but I was definitely proven wrong.

According to the American Cancer Society, there are currently about 11.7 million people living in the United States who have had some type of cancer. Some of them are cancer-free; others are still battling the disease. So we’re talking about a lot of people who might benefit from starting or continuing a workout routine as they battle the awful disease.

Seeing that it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month to boot, here are some must-know facts on how fitness and cancer coincide and what every cancer patient should know about working out with cancer.