Moving Through Cancer – by Dr. Kathryn Schmitz

We all know exercise is good for most things, but cancer is complicated, so… What should we do? Should we take it easy? Exercise more? Conserve energy? Can speeding up our metabolism (generally considered good) commensurately speed up the cancer (bad)?

Dr. Kathryn Schmitz is an expert in sports medicine for cancer patients, with decades of experience in that field.

Then, when her wife was diagnosed with an aggressive stage 3 cancer, Dr. Schmitz (of course) applied everything she knew, and doubled-down going through all available research with a fine-toothed comb. What was already her career, became her reason for living.

Prior to her wife getting cancer, Dr. Schmitz had already overturned the medical convention of yesteryear; it was her own research that changed mainstream policies on exercise recommendation for breast cancer patients specifically (previous advice was: avoid upper body exercise). That was about six years before her wife’s cancer diagnosis, which is at time of writing, 9 years ago now (happily, she is doing fine now, and is officially cancer-free* in the sense of “no evidence of disease”), and she’s only continued to increase her research since, to share it with us.

*this term is often avoided due to the technically non-zero chance of cancer returning, but the author uses it in this case, so we’ll use it here too.

This book covers many different kinds of cancer, with exercise protocols tailored for each, and also covers exercise in the context of surgery, chemotherapy and other infusion therapies, radiation therapies, hormonal therapies, and more.

On that note, she makes the distinction between “prehabilitation” (getting into the best possible condition before treatment) and post-treatment recovery protocols, and how to balance getting adequate exercise with getting adequate rest, during treatments of the ongoing kind (i.e. pretty much anything apart from surgery—since during surgery, one will certainly not be exercising).

All of this is very evidence-based, as one might expect from someone with her background in both academia and practice, and as such she refers to many studies throughout.

This is mostly a practical book, with direct instructions on what to do and how to do it and how to tailor it to your specific cancer/situation, with day-by-day, week-by-week plans, coupled with frequent reminders of such things as “but this adds to your stress, don’t do it; managing your stress is more important”, and “if you are unable to do the exercise on any given day, or must do a modified version, or cut your exercise short, just log that in your exercise journal and try again tomorrow”, and so forth.

That side of things is not limited to just disclaimers, either—she’s very aware, from her own experience with her wife, that fighting cancer is an emotional battle as much as a physical one, and she gives genuine attention to that too.

Bottom line: if you or a loved one has or has had cancer, this book can help survivorship and recovery, with highly specialised advice from someone who is not only a world-class expert in her field, but also very clearly cares very deeply.

Click here to check out Moving Through Cancer, and move through cancer!