Fitness can prevent lung cancer and improve survival, and you need to be more active after quitting smoking

Studies have found that fitness and physical activity can reduce the risk of lung and other cancers.

For lung cancer, this benefit does not appear to be isolated to any group of people. Men and women, smokers, ex-smokers, and never-smokers, all benefit from exercise. Best of all, to make a difference, exercising doesn't require you to spend a few hours a day or expensive fitness bills. Even gardening twice a week was associated with a lower risk of disease.

Overall, people who exercised regularly had about a 20 percent lower risk of lung cancer.

Exercise was associated with a lower risk of lung cancer death for both men and women, with the benefit appearing to be slightly greater for women. To study the effect of exercise on human lung cancer, human experiments are impossible. It would be unethical to have one group of surviving people exercise and another group to be deliberately sedentary. And animal studies don't necessarily translate to humans, but a 2019 analysis of studies that looked at exercise and tumor growth in rodents found that exercise was significantly associated with slower tumor growth.

Another study published in 2016 showed that older women who were physically active at the time of lung cancer had better survival rates.

We do know that exercise can help people tolerate treatment better and be able to continue treatment, which ultimately translates to improved survival.

Although early-stage lung cancer has a higher survival rate than advanced-stage disease, these tumors have a high chance of recurrence. In a study published in 2015, even mild exercise was found to reduce the risk of lung cancer recurrence.

The effect of exercise on lung cancer is significant enough that oncologists encourage lung cancer patients to start exercising. It is recommended to exercise 3 times a week for 30 minutes (moderate-intensity aerobic exercise), plus exercise 20 minutes to 30 minutes of resistance exercise twice a week.

A 2019 report examined the evidence to date evaluating the role of exercise in cancer treatment. For comparison, exercise here was uniformly determined to be at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at least three times a week. The body can be improved by:

reduce fatigue

reduce anxiety

Reduced symptoms of depression: Depression is far too common in lung cancer patients, and death rates are significantly higher. Notably, lung cancer depression may be associated with inflammation, and treating inflammation may be the key to reducing symptoms.

Improve one's own physical function

Improve overall quality of life

Reducing cancer-induced fatigue is important because it is one of the most distressing symptoms for many cancer patients.

Among lung cancer survivors who remained active, we also found other positive aspects: better self-confidence, improved body composition, and better sleep. Keep in mind that fitness exercises can further improve survival with these additional benefits.

For example, insomnia in lung cancer patients may reduce survival, and exercise is one way to help.

As mentioned earlier, the amount of physical activity needed to reduce lung cancer risk and improve survival and quality of life can be as simple as doing gardening and chores a few times a week. Too many of us fail to complete these sports because we set our goals too high. For those dealing with cancer fatigue, this can be even more difficult.

For those who are able to exercise, at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week is recommended.

But if that's not possible, don't be discouraged. A little bit helps:

Starting to grow flowers, gardening can actually have a variety of benefits. Not only does growing beautiful flowers help us think more positively about cancer, but if you grow some of the foods that fight lung cancer, you can get more out of it.

Dance, music therapy appears to help relieve lung cancer pain and shortness of breath, and can be the icing on the cake for your dance routine.

Going out among friends, if you're with other people, it can make the exercise more effective because you're not only supervised, but you can add a little more competition to the exercise. Not only do you exercise this way, but social interaction is another factor that improves survival.

It is clear that physical activity improves cancer survival and quality of life. But when it comes to what you can do yourself to reduce risk or improve your odds of survival, the combination of positives (being positive in every way) is very important.