NORMAL LIFE Exercise Reduces Insulin Resistance!

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Doctors harp on exercise.

Despite the harping – or in my case, perversely because of it – I avoid exercise like the plague.

Even so, as I read more and more sites promoting the “exercise makes you better if you have breast cancer” meme, I found that almost none of them give any kind of evidence as to WHY exercise fights cancer and promotes healing.

So I dug into the sites and finally found some evidence supporting this wild, “Do this one weird thing…” kind of meme. This week, it’s number:

7) Insulin resistance, hyperinsulinaemia, hyperglycaemia and type 2 diabetes have been linked to increased risk of breast, colon, pancreas and endometrial cancers. Physical activity decreases insulin resistance, reduces hyperinsulinaemia and reduces risk for diabetes, which could explain the link between increased physical activity and reduced risk for these cancers

I talked about the connection between insulin and breast cancer earlier (http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2012/03/exercise-reduces-estrogen-in-blood-and.html), so I’ll talk more about EXERCISE here.

But before I go on, I’d like to say something about “non-exercise exercise”. My wife and hero works with kindergartners all day long: teaching reading, going out to recess, going to lunch, chasing down stragglers and generally corralling the little munchkins so much that she comes home with aching feet.

My question has always been: at what point does what I DO in everyday life become exercise?

There are advocates of daily exercise that explain: “We don't expend energy doing anything. We've actually engineered regular daily physical activity out of our lives…He says a lot of things stop us from burning calories…We come to work in almost any vocation and we sit. And we sit for eight hours and then we get up and we sit in the motorcar, you know, in automobile and we go home. When we arrive at home, we sit in front of the television. We have frozen TV dinners. We have pre-prepared, prepackaged food that doesn't require energy to collect it. We don't hunt, cook it. It's mostly just put in microwaves and simple systems…We don't even chop vegetables anymore. Bauman says that's very different from the way life used to be. He cites research by a colleague who studied people living and working in a historical Australian village, recreating life in the 19th century…Their energy expenditures were three to five times the amount that people spend today. And that was just a regular person going to and from work. It wasn't a lumberjack or someone who was working on the land or someone who had a huge heavily physical job…And, of course, three to five times more energy expenditure burns a lot more calories… Physical inactivity is a major risk factor for death and for illness. It contributes to about one-sixth of heart disease, cardiovascular disease, about the same for diabetes, about 12 percent for falls in the elderly, and about a tenth of all breast cancer and colon cancer are attributable to being physically inactive.” (Interview, Bauman/Silberner)

But what if my wife isn’t DOING that? Is what she DOES every day considered “exercise”?

YES!

“Even if you don’t have a 15 or 30 minute window to dedicate to yoga or a bike ride, that doesn’t mean you can’t add physical activity to your day. If you're not ready to commit to a structured exercise program, think about physical activity as a lifestyle choice rather than a single task to check off your to-do list. Look at your daily routine and consider ways to sneak in activity here and there. Even very small activities can add up over the course of a day: Clean the house, wash the car, tend to the yard and garden, mow the lawn with a push mower, sweep the sidewalk or patio with a broom; bike or walk to an appointment rather than drive, banish all elevators and use the stairs, briskly walk to the bus stop then get off one stop early, park at the back of the lot and walk into the store or office, take a vigorous walk during your coffee break. Walk while you’re talking on your cell phone; walk or jog around the soccer field during your kid’s practice, make a neighborhood bike ride part of weekend routine, play tag with your children in the yard or play exercise video games. Walk the dog together as a family, or if you don’t have your own dog, volunteer to walk a dog from a shelter. Organize an office bowling team, take a class in martial arts, dance, or yoga with a friend or spouse; gently stretch while watching your favorite show, do push-ups, sit-ups or lift light weights during the commercial breaks—you'll be amazed at how many repetitions you can fit in during the commercials of a half hour show! Better still, once a week turn off the TV and take a walk outside instead”

And the benefit of all that movement?

The very same ones as ANY form of exercise provides, and in this particular case, it results in an increased effectiveness of insulin in those who are insulin resistant!

So MOVE! If we can do it, so can you!

Resources: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127525702, http://www.helpguide.org/life/exercise.htm

Image: http://img.ehowcdn.com/article-new/ehow/images/a07/qg/bv/games-kindergartenage-children-800x800.jpg