Tag: High-Intensity

Exercise and Cancer Cells: High-Intensity Exercise = High-Intensity Results [RESEARCH]

(Title image: Photo by Blocks Fletcher on Unsplash)

I am a huge proponent of exercise, both for prevention of cancer and its recurrence and in management of cancer treatment side effects, not to mention improving quality-of-life. Now a new study shows how even just one exercise session can have a powerful effect on cancer cells.

A randomized controlled trial conducted by researchers in Australia (Bettariga et al., 2025, Breast Cancer Res Treat) explored the effects of a single bout of vigorous activity (either weightlifting or interval training) on the production of anti-cancer myokines and investigated how blood drawn from study participants affected live cancer cells in the laboratory.

There has been a lot of research on the efficacy of exercise in reducing the risk of both developing cancer and preventing recurrence. However, this study focused exclusively on breast cancer survivors, which was important given that the physiology of survivors is affected by the treatments that they’ve gone through.

What was so gratifying to me was to see the significant effect of strenuous exercise. While the greatest benefit was seen from high-intensity interval training regarding its lethal effect on live breast cancer cells due to particularly high levels of a myokine called IL-6, the researchers stressed that strength training was likewise important as a cancer-fighting activity because building muscle through exercise also increased the amount of myokines circulating through the body.

The study participants engaged in strenuous exercise, but the program was created with noice exercisers in mind.
(Photo by Intenza Fitness on Unsplash)

It’s important to note that all thirty-two participants in this study were not exercising prior to joining the research group. Even so, they were able to tolerate the high intensity of the workouts. Keep in mind that “high intensity” is relative to the individual. That means strenuous exercise (for this study, reaching an effort level of at least a 7 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 10) will be different for a novice exerciser versus a highly-trained professional athlete.

So often, I encounter people who are willing to take a plethora of medications with considerable side effects, but roll their eyes when exercise is mentioned. Some people view physical activity as being only for those who are interested in looking a certain way or being mainly for those who have already reached a certain level of fitness.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Exercise is for everyone. We all start at different points; where exactly that is doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we are willing to exert enough energy to make a difference in our physiology and our well-being.

This is not “diet culture” or anything to do with body shaming. This is about doing what you can personally to increase your chances of a cancer-free life.

Survivors can talk to their healthcare team, show them this research and request that doctors lobby their insurance companies. Personal training, subsidized exercise equipment and gym memberships, fitness classes at cancer centers—all of these should be considered a critical part of cancer treatment and survivorship.

REFERENCES

Reader-Friendly Article:
Reynolds G (September 11, 2025) “A single exercise session may slow cancer cell growth, new study shows.” Washington Post. Free access via MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/a-single-exercise-session-may-slow-cancer-cell-growth-new-study-shows/ar-AA1Ml2oc?ocid=socialshare

Research Study:
Full publication
Bettariga F, Taaffe DR, Crespo-Garcia C, Clay TD, De Santi M, Baldelli G, Adhikari S, Gray ES, Galvão DA, Newton RU (2025) A single bout of resistance or high-intensity interval training increases anti-cancer myokines and suppresses cancer cell growth in vitro in survivors of breast cancer. Breast Cancer Res Treat, 213, 171-180. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10549-025-07772-w
PubMed Listing
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40608178/

Strength Training through Chemotherapy: A Case Study

(Title image: Photo by Luis Reyes on Unsplash)

It used to be that people undergoing chemotherapy for cancer were told to be careful with physical activity and restrict themselves to low- and moderate-intensity exercise. Even when I was going through cancer treatment eight years ago, there was concern about how much weight I was lifting for fear of eliciting lymphedema, although by that time, exercise was more encouraged.

I am so glad that our understanding of exercise and cancer has changed! This evolution in thinking is exemplified by a case study that was recently published in the journal Lifestyle Medicine (Rolle & Crane, 2025). The lead author and PhD student in Public Health at U of Miami, LaShae Rolle (age 27), was also a competitive powerlifter who was diagnosed with stage 2B estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer in 2024.

For LaShae, exercise was an integral part of her life, something to which I can relate. She worked with her team to create training sessions that aligned appropriately with her cancer treatments which consisted of four cycles of chemo following a mastectomy.

Remarkably, by modifying her workouts as needed, LaShae was able to maintain 93% of her squat strength (408 lbs of her 441-lb one-repetition maximum (1RM)) and 87% of both her bench press (254 lbs of her 292-lb 1RM) and deadlift (430 lbs of her 497-lb 1RM). This is so impressive considering that throughout her chemo treatment she was still able to squat and deadlift over 400 lbs!

Not surprisingly, attempting to train at high-intensity on the day following her first infusion (!) resulted in severe dizziness and fatigue. By the 3rd and 4th cycles of her chemo, Rolle found that delaying intense exercises for about a week following her infusions allowed her to train more effectively. Note that her chemo cycles were three weeks apart, allowing sufficient time to recover.

Exercising Through Breast Cancer: How One Powerlifter Defied Chemotherapy with Strength Training
Yes, you can train vigorously during chemotherapy!

Why keep training during chemotherapy? There is a rapidly increasing body of research that demonstrates the critical role that physical activity plays in recovery from cancer treatment and avoiding recurrence. Unfortunately, for people who view exercise as a chore or burden, being urged to maintain an exercise program while they’re undergoing something as punishing as chemotherapy may feel like an additional punishment.

But the benefits of exercising throughout treatment, as appropriate, are irrefutable. For those who haven’t previously exercised, it’s important to begin slowly, finding physical activities that are enjoyable and rewarding, eventually ramping up the challenge to include cardiovascular exercise, strength training, balance work and flexibility training.

For those for whom workouts are an integral part of their lives, being encouraged to continue exercising as we have prior to cancer is psychologically uplifting. I’ve written in earlier posts that working out was one of the few things that I could do that gave me a sense of control in the out-of-control landscape of a cancer diagnosis. It helped me feel “normal” when I felt anything but, and that was such an important part of mentally getting through treatment.

Bottom line: Participating in your regular exercise routine during chemotherapy is doable, with modifications, and the physical activity can help you get through the treatment process. While LaShae Rolle did experience treatment side effects, she was able to work around those to limit the amount of strength she lost during chemo to an impressive degree.

REFERENCES

Research Article:

Rolle LD & Crane TE (2025) Exercising Through Breast Cancer: A Case Study on Strength Training During Active Treatment. Lifestyle Medicine, 6, e70034. https://doi.org/10.1002/lim2.70034

Reader-friendly versions:

EurekaAlert!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1092107

University of Miami News Article
https://news.med.miami.edu/exercising-through-breast-cancer-how-one-powerlifter-defied-chemotherapy-with-strength-training/

Protection Against Doxorubicin’s Cardiotoxicity: Exercise?

One of the strongest chemotherapy drugs used for breast cancer is doxorubicin, a drug in the anthracyline family that you might know as Adriamycin. It’s called “The Red Devil” due to its bright red color and tendency to temporarily dye the bodily fluids of its recipient red, but also due to its toxicity.

While it is highly effective, its use is limited by its potentially serious side effects, including damage to the heart. According to Drugs.com, “[b]ecause of its heart toxicity, doxorubicin has a maximum cumulative dose that can be given to each patient. The higher the total dose you receive over time, the greater your chance of heart side effects.”

Doxorubicin is a highly effective chemotherapy, but carries with it a considerable risk of heart toxicity.

There has been interest in discovering other drugs that can decrease the cardiotoxicity of doxorubicin, particularly since in addition to breast cancer, it is used against a variety of other cancers.

But as with so many things cancer-related, the drugs given to protect against chemotherapy side effects themselves have side effects, so it’s useful to explore other means of achieving protection from the toxic effects of doxorubicin.

Can Exercise Help?

In a webinar for the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) that I attended on May 18, 2023, University of Florida, Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology researcher Dr. Ashley Smuder and her lab presented research about the protective effects of exercise on the heart and muscle doxorubicin.

Importantly, Dr. Smuder’s lab was able to demonstrate that exercise-trained rats who were then given doxorubicin showed a decrease in the amount of drug that accumulated in the heart and diaphragm compared to sedentary rats, echoing the results of Parry and Hayward (2015, Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol). Those results had suggested that exercise didn’t diminish and even increased the amount of doxorubicin that made it to the cancer tumor while decreasing the amount of the drug that went to the heart (left ventricle) and diaphragm.

Exercise keeps rodents healthier, even under a punishing chemotherapy regimen.

While the actual mechanism of this protective effect is still being researched, once again these studies show the benefits of exercise in a cancer situation.

Additionally, a doctoral student in Dr. Smuder’s lab, Brendan Nguyen, reported on work that he’s done showing the differences of exercise on fat mass and lean mass in rats administered doxorubicin using the same infusion schedule that a human patient would received (4 doses, 3 weeks apart). There were four conditions: (1) a sedentary group that received saline injections, (2) a sedentary group that received doxorubicin, (3) a moderate-exercise group that received doxorubicin, (4) a high-intensity exercise training (HIIT) group that received doxorubicin.

  • Moderate exercise: rats ran on a treadmill 3 days/week at a speed of 30 meters/min for 60 min/session.
  • HIIT exercise: rats ran on a treadmill 3 days/week, four 4-min bouts at 45 meters/min with 3 minutes of active recovery in between the bouts.

Not surprisingly, the exercise training had a significant effect on the body composition of the animals. Sedentary rats in both groups had an increased risk of obesity. Both groups of exercising rats (both moderate exercise and HIIT) saw a decrease in fat mass during this time and were able to avoid doxorubicin-induced cardiorespiratory weakness. Also, the HIIT exercise animals showed a significant increase in lean mass in addition to the drop in fat mass.

For reliable protection from the negative physiological effects of chemotherapy, exercise is still your best bet.

These findings in rats reflect similar results that have been obtained in humans (Battaglini et al, 2014, World J Clin Oncol; Lee et al, 2019, BMC Cancer; Lee et al, 2021, Support Care Cancer). Brendan noted that particularly HIIT exercise “may prevent unfavorable changes in body composition” compared to a sedentary condition.

The take-home message here remains the same as it’s been in my other posts. If you don’t currently exercise, start now. And then don’t stop. It’s easy to keep laboratory rats active and fit, but humans find many reasons not to challenge themselves with physical activity. If you needed a reason, these studies provide a little encouragement to find your favorite movement modality and make exercise a life-long habit.

REFERENCES

Battaglini CL, Mills RC, Phillips BL, Lee JT, Story CE, Nascimento MG, Hackney AC (2014) Twenty-five years of research on the effects of exercise training in breast cancer survivors: A systematic review of the literature. World J Clin Oncol, 5, 177-190. https://doi.org/10.5306/wjco.v5.i2.177.

Lee K, Kang I, Mack WJ, Mortimer J, Sattler F, Salem G, Dieli-Conwright CM (2019) Feasibility of high intensity interval training in patients with breast Cancer undergoing anthracycline chemotherapy: a randomized pilot trial. BMC Cancer, 19, 653. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-019-5887-7.

Lee K, Norris MK, Wang E, Dieli-Conwright CM (2021) Effect of high-intensity interval training on patient-reported outcomes and physical function in women with breast cancer receiving anthracycline-based chemotherapy. Support Care Cancer, 29, 6863-6870. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-021-06294-7.

Parry TL, Hayward R (2015) Exercise training does not affect anthracycline antitumor efficacy while attenuating cardiac dysfunction. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol, 309, R675-83. https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpregu.00185.2015.

Smuder AJ, Nguyen BL (May 18, 2023) Cardiorespiratory muscle response to chemotherapy and exercise. ACSM’s From Around The Field webinar.