Category: Uncategorized

Just to recognise melanie bowen for her excellent post the other day, and the very positive reaction from you, here is her blog address.

www.mesothelioma.com/blog/authors/melanie

I am sure she has a big future in front of her.

Melanie is currently a Master’s student with a passion that stems from her grandmother’s cancer diagnosis. She often highlights the great benefits of alternative nutritional, emotional, and physical treatments on those diagnosed with cancer or other serious illness. To read more from Melanie, visit her blog for the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance. In her spare time, you can find Melanie trying new vegan recipes, on her yoga mat, or spending time with her family.

A guest post today from a lady called Melanie Bowen, see what you think. It’s high quality and i am sure you will find it fascinating.

Regaining Physical Health and Fighting Cancer

Fitness is extremely important at any time, but can be especially vital for people who have been diagnosed with cancer. Exercise and breathing techniques can help with relaxation. Physical fitness has been shown to increase the immune system and makes treating cancer easier. Each stage of cancer has different fitness techniques that be more appropriate than others. From light to advanced exercise, these fitness techniques can help to alleviate cancer symptoms and make treatment run more smoothly.

Breathing Exercises

This lighter form of exercise is great for improving lung function. It increases blood circulation in the body, reduces fatigue and is a primary form of self-care. Individuals who have lung cancer may find it difficult to do even simple forms of exercise, but breathing techniques can still help. Prolonged, slow breathing can increase oxygen flow and make it easier to stay active while at home. Those with mesothelioma prognosis or other lung-related cancers need to increase their breathing abilities through simple, daily techniques. The goal at this point of treatment is to gradually increase fitness levels at home. Breathing techniques help this by making the patient slowly increase their physical activity levels.

Water Aerobics

As cancer patients enter the recovery process, they can begin to transition from light exercise to moderate fitness programs. Water aerobics is a great moderate fitness routine because it helps to build cardiovascular endurance and increase the circulation in the body. Since it is performed in the water, it is easier on the joints and reduces stress to the body’s limbs. Water typically has 12 to 14 times the resistance levels of land-based exercises. This factor helps water aerobics to increase the patient’s flexibility and strength. In addition, water aerobics helps with weight maintenance. Since the patient is submerged in water, they can easily control their body temperature and prevent overheating during exercise.

Weight Training

When patients have entered the later stages of recovery, they need to focus on returning the body to good health and maintaining it. One excellent exercise for this vigorous level of activity is weight training. By lifting weights, patients can increase their muscular endurance and improve their cardiovascular system. Weight training is also great because it naturally boosts energy levels. The NCI actually recommends using weight training during the later stages of cancer because it can help regain muscle tone.

Patients who have developed more fat tissue during their treatment process can begin to decrease the fat tissue naturally with weight training. Cancer of the prostate, stomach, head and neck are all known to decrease the amount of muscle mass in the body. In order to battle cancer, patients have to regain their muscle mass and increase their fitness levels.

There are different physical activities for each stage of cancer. Patients need to start slowly with light fitness programs as they try to regain muscle mass. Through consistent work, cancer survivors can increase their blood circulation, regain muscle mass and improve their cardiovascular system. All of these factors make it easier to regain physical health and boost energy levels. In the battle against cancer, exercise is key to returning to good health.

Following on from today’s comment, please don’t think that these ways of training are just for the pro’s or every experienced trainers, they are for everyone!

I have seen a lot of so called “not so talented” athletes and everyday people become extremely good at these ways of training, and often master many of them.

The reason i put them into people’s training again is for results, plus the enjoyment factor, plus the realisaton that anyone can train like a pro athlete as long as they go at their own pace.

Again, i strongly encourage you to think about the way you train, and why most people’s training is stuck in the 70’s and 80’s!!

It’s monday, and you know how its vital to hit the start of the week running, and please give it your best to really give yourself fresh momentum!!

Or if you are going away, what’s your attitude to doing workouts on holiday? Especially relevant this time of year and can make the difference to your progress and especially your mindset.

You are probably one of two types of people.

You cant wait to get away and not do any training.

Or

You take your trainers with you on every holiday and without fail, you always slip a couple of workouts in.

The mindset to take your trainers away with you is very powerful for your forward momentum, and demonstrates how important being in shape is for you.

On the other hand, if its your only holiday and you have been flat out training all year long, its good to have a break from your training and indeed, you are likely to come back fresher and enthused about the challenges ahead of you for the rest of the year.

So you have to balance which one works for you, and time your breaks to suit your schedule.

If you attitude is the first one, you’re glad to get away from your training because you’re really not into it anyway, then you will be likely to heavily over-indulge every day on holiday. Have you noticed when you come back, you promise to start back training but it somehow gets “put off” for the slightest of excuses!

This is when your mindset gets damaged and even when you do get your first workouts in, your eating is going to be all over the place and you really struggle to get back into proper eating again. In fact, the sugary and fatty foods you consume on holiday never really go away and getting back to eating to complement great health and fitness never really gets going.

The best attitude to have (in my opinion) is to enjoy your holiday, be laid back but try and do some activity, whatever it may be. You will NEVER keep your normal schedule up and who would expect you to do that that anyway?!!!!!

Doing something will work for you big time and give you a slight incentive to eat fresher foods and not the rubbish that’s going to make you feel lousy anyway. Of course you’re going to feel amazing if you eat as you do at home but you’re on holiday, so enjoy yourself.

What im saying is its all about balance, and you don’t need to trash yourself just because you’re on holiday, it should be fun but nothing wrong with putting some good food in there too, along with something active every couple of days.

This keeps you in shape and gives you momentum to start early when you return from holidays.
Don’t let 7-14 days of holidays turn into 6-8 weeks of lousy progress, we’ve all been there so lets make it happen this year!!

If you have bought some kind of health and fitness magazine lately, you may have been confused by what they have to say. This may be because the last one you bought may have said something quite different.

The one before that would have changed its message before that, and this is even before you get to reading the more “serious magazines”!

The lack of clarity and simplicity in the health and fitness message promoted in the media is not only confusing, but sometimes downright dangerous.

For example, presenter jeremy vine had a heart problem the other day and promptly blamed advice in the media for trying out the go all out approach on a rowing machine. He said he saw some advice that short all out efforts were better than conventional workouts.

I thought someone in his position would have sought professional advice.

Anyone without prior experience of exercise should NEVER, EVER go straight into an all out exercise programme.

You should always build up your activity and workouts SLOWLY AND GRADUALLY, under proper supervision. Never do too much, never try to copy programmes you see in magazines or papers without proper assessment of you capabilties.

Exercise can and will be extremely good for you. The british heart association and the british stroke society immediately responded to jeremy vine saying that exercise is good for you and reduces the chances of heart related disease by 50% at least, and what mr vine did was against the recommendations they give for exercise, and what most exercise professionals give out every day.

This is a great example of why you should always get proper advice on exercise AND build up gradually and never rush things.