Distress doesn't push cancer patients to be active

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Psychological distress doesn't seem to motivate colorectal cancer patients to engage in more physical exercise, Australian researchers report.

Some investigators have suggested that a cancer diagnosis may offer a "teachable moment" that spurs a person to adopt healthier habits, Dr. Suzanne K. Chambers of the Cancer Council Queensland and her colleagues write in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Greater physical activity can have special benefits for cancer patients, Chambers and her team add; people who are active before and after being diagnosed with colorectal cancer survive longer, while exercise may also help ease psychological distress, which affects up to 35 percent of people with cancer.

To investigate how psychological distress relates to physical activity in cancer patients, the researchers followed 978 survivors of colorectal cancer for 36 months after their diagnosis.

People who had many physical symptoms of psychological distress, which is known medically as somatization, were more likely to be inactive or insufficiently active, the researchers found, while those who perceived the impact of cancer on their lives in a more positive way were less likely to be inactive.

Individuals who reported fatigue were 50 percent more likely to not be getting enough physical activity, while smokers were eight times as likely as non-smokers to be inactive. Obese people were about twice as likely as normal weight people to be inactive.

Those who had high levels of anxiety at the study's outset were also less likely to increase their physical activity over time.

"The lack of a positive relationship between higher psychological distress and increases in physical activity does not suggest that distress acts as a motivator to exercise in these cancer survivors," the researchers write. This "underscores the challenge of making exercise interventions relevant to patients whose main focus is coping with a life-threatening illness," they add.

At present, there are no guidelines on physical activity for patients with colorectal cancer, Chambers and her team note. The current findings suggest such recommendations "need to be individually tailored along the lines of 'anything more than they are doing now is a good thing'," they conclude.

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