Study: Exercise May Slow Down Cancer Growth

An animal study suggests that exercise could reduce cancer's progression rate by more than half. Researchers found out that the surge of adrenaline during high-intensity workouts improves levels of an immune system chemical that mobilizes cancer-killing cells.

The Fox News reported that scientists from Denmark's University of Copenhagen revealed that patients may be able to slow down cancer's development through frequent running. They conducted experiments on mice and found out that running reduced the expansion of lung, skin and liver tumors by up to 50 percent.

"It is known that infiltration of natural killer (NK) immune cells can control and regulate the size of tumors, but nobody had looked at how exercise regulates the system," said senior study author Pernille Hojman in an article of Science Daily.

"In our experiments, we tried to inject our mice with adrenaline to mimic this increase you see during exercise, and when we do that we see that the NK cells are mobilized to the bloodstream, and if there's a tumor present then the NK cells will find the tumor and home to it," Hojman explained.

Hojman said that they found out that an immune signaling molecule called IL-6 helped guide the immune cells to the tumors. "In this study we show that the exercise-induced IL-6 seems to play a role in homing of NK cells to the tumor and also in the activation of those NK cells."

"While it has previously been difficult to advise people about the intensity at which they should exercise, our data suggest that it might be beneficial to exercise at a somewhat high intensity in order to provoke a good epinephrine surge and hence recruitment of NK cells," Hojman disclosed.

Reacting to the recent study, Cancer Research UK told The Sun that high-intensity workouts are risky for patients with bone cancers. Patients who have undergone major surgery should also seek a doctor's advice.