JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Colon cancer is on the rise among young adults in the U.S. New research finds regular exercise can help survivors live longer - in some cases, even longer than people who haven't had colon cancer. NPR's Maria Godoy has more.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: When it comes to colon cancer, the good news is that overall, death rates have been falling thanks to improvements in screening and treatment. But survivors still tend to have a shorter life expectancy, in large part because of the risk that the cancer will come back.
JEFF MEYERHARDT: You can imagine that if patients unfortunately recur, that certainly could affect their survival.
GODOY: That's Dr. Jeff Meyerhardt, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He says researchers have long known that exercise can improve survival rates in colon cancer patients.
MEYERHARDT: Studies over the years have actually shown that those who were more physically active seem to have a lower risk of occurrence and improvement in overall survival compared to those who were less physically active.
GODOY: Meyerhardt and his colleagues wanted to know if regular physical activity could actually help patients improve their survival rates compared to those who'd never had cancer. So they surveyed nearly 3,000 colon cancer patients about their exercise habits during and after treatment. They found for patients who were three years cancer-free, exercise made a big difference.
MEYERHARDT: They actually looked like they had a slightly better overall survival compared to the general population.
GODOY: Even patients whose cancer recurred had longer survival rates if they exercised the equivalent of walking about an hour a day at a 2- to 3-mile-per-hour pace on most days. Kathryn Schmitz is an exercise oncology researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. She's a firm proponent of the power of exercise, both to reduce the risk of dying from colon cancer and to prevent it in the first place.
KATHRYN SCHMITZ: I know of nothing else that is within the patient's control that is more powerful for reducing cancer mortality - particularly colon cancer mortality - than physical activity.
GODOY: Researchers are still trying to determine why exercise helps, but evidence suggests that physical activity triggers a series of chemical reactions in cells that promote health in multiple ways.
SCHMITZ: What you might think of is that all of our cells are bathed in a soup of sorts, and the constituents of that soup change as a result of being more physically active.
GODOY: She says when you're sedentary, your immune system doesn't work as well and your cells are more prone to inflammation, which can cause cells to mutate. But when you exercise on a regular basis...
SCHMITZ: Your inflammation goes down, your immune function is better, and the soup in which your cells are bathed is healthier in a way that will tamp down any cancer development or cancer progression.
GODOY: And at a time when colon cancer rates are rising among people under 50, it's more important than ever to get the word out about exercise. Here's Dr. Kimmie Ng. She's director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber.
KIMMIE NG: We do think that exercise starting in childhood and adolescence also seems to be very important for protecting against the future risk of developing colorectal cancer as an adult.
GODOY: It's just one more reason why it's crucial to build time for exercise into your daily routine. Maria Godoy, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN SONG "PHYSICAL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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