The healthier your body is, the stronger it will be to fight off disease.
While those who work in the ‘alternative’ health care field have known for years that the strength of health of your body directly affects how it can handle disease, the relationship between exercise and cancer has long both intrigued and puzzled oncologists and exercise physiologists.
In epidemiological studies, people who regularly exercise generally prove to be much less likely to develop or die from the disease than people who do not. At the same time, exercise involves biological stress, which typically leads to a short-term increase in inflammation throughout the body. Inflammation can contribute to elevated risks for many cancers.
A new study in mice may offer some clues into the exercise-cancer paradox. It suggests that exercise may change how the immune system deals with cancer by boosting adrenalin, certain immune cells and other chemicals that, together, can reduce the severity of cancer or fight it off altogether.
Researchers found much higher numbers in the bloodstreams of runners than in the sedentary mice of a type of immune cell named natural killer cells that are known to be potent cancer fighters.
By studying the action of various genes within the cells of the mice, the scientists determined that adrenalin seemed to be sending biochemical signals to some of the animals’ IL-6 cells, making them physiologically more alert, so that when a tumour began to develop in the affected animal, those IL-6 cells in turn activated the natural killer cells in the bloodstream and actually directed them to the tumours.
Because the runners’ blood generally contained more adrenalin, more IL-6, and more natural killer cells than did the blood of the sedentary mice, this process was intensified. A larger number of natural killer cells were directed to tumours in the runners, allowing their immune systems, it seems, to more effectively combat the malignancy.
Regardless of what your health is today, getting adjusted, exercising, reducing sugar, and increasing water will make your body stronger and healthier.
