Get out there and exercise (after consulting with your doctor)! Now a world-first trial involving patients from the US, UK, Australia, France, Canada and Israel has found that a structured exercise regime after treatment can dramatically reduce the risk of dying, the disease returning or a new cancer developing. The results were presented in Chicago at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) annual meeting, the world’s largest cancer conference, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Patients who began a structured exercise regime with the help of a personal trainer or health coach after they completed treatment had a 37% lower risk of death and a 28% lower risk of recurrent or new cancers developing, compared with patients who received only health advice, the trial found. Asked to put the effect of exercise on cancer patients’ outcomes into context, Gralow said: “We titled [the session it was presented in] As Good as a Drug. I would have retitled it Better than a Drug, because you don’t have all the side-effects.” “It’s the same magnitude of benefit of many drugs that get approved for this kind of magnitude of benefit – 28% decreased risk of occurrence, 37% decreased risk of death. Drugs get approved for less than that, and they’re expensive and they’re toxic.” While this study followed only colon cancer patients, Gralow said there was no reason to think the findings would not be applicable across other cancers. Booth said trials for other cancers would be needed, but added that data from this study suggested there were lower breast and prostate cancer occurrences in the exercise group. Full article at the link below: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jun/01/exercise-better-than-drugs-after-cancer-treatment-international-trial-finds