Care Partners Compass: Navigating CRC

S2Ep3 - The importance of exercise for cancer patients (and how care partners can help too)
Elsa Lankford

Elsa 0:01
Welcome to Care Partners Compass Navigating CRC. My name is Elsa Lankford. I am the care partner to my incredible wife, Kristine, who has stage four colorectal cancer. As a disclaimer, this podcast and its content is for entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by any hosts or guests on this podcast are their own personal opinions. Reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. This podcast does not contain medical or legal advice. Please consult your medical professional about any medical questions or concerns.

Elsa 0:47
This episode is going to be about colorectal cancer and exercise. It's front of mind because there are some interesting news about CRC and exercise that came out of the 2025 ASCO conference. ASCO has an annual conference for oncologists, radiologists, doctors, researchers, and patient advocates. and it happens the end of every May, beginning of June. There's also a GI version of ASCO that meets every January. Welcome to my world where I know when oncologists have conferences.

1:32
I tend to virtually attend these when possible to be able to find out new information that might be helpful for Kristine, but also to share information that I can with others.

1:47
So that's some of what we're going to get into. Another reason that I wanted to talk about CRC and exercise is because of how important it is to Kristine. And lastly, I'll talk about how care partners might fit into this whole exercise thing

------ MSK Cancer and Exercise Data ------ 2:03

Elsa 2:03
I'm going to start with some data out of MSK. MSK is Memorial Sloan Kettering and they're in New York They're a very well-known cancer center and they actually run the virtual exercise program that Kristine has been and that I've been recently joining in on. Their data showed that people that have had three months of chemo have a 15% decline in fitness levels within three to six months of treatment. They're equating that to a decade of aging, but exercising times a week can reduce that. So that's a staggering number. People with colorectal cancer in early stages might very well have three to six months of but people that are stage four might have a lot more than that. There was also a study done at the University of Pennsylvania that researcher ended up at MSK. They surveyed over 600 cancer patients and they found that their physical activity from cancer diagnosis through treatment and through a year of survivorship declined greatly. Their physical activity level

3:21
75% after diagnosis

3:24
and a year out from diagnosis for more than half their physical activity level was still down. The reasons that patients listed for having trouble to doing physical activity were fatigue, problems getting motivated to move, problems sticking with the exercise, and the side effects of treatment. That includes nausea, probably diarrhea, probably diarrhea, etc. Also being sad and not having time.

------ ASCO25 Exercise Data ------ 4:02

Elsa 4:03
getting back to that ASCO 2025 conference where there was actually an entire session with multiple people talking about exercise and cancer, there was a very interesting study out of Canada that talked about Early stage colorectal cancer and exercise. So this was a phase three randomized trial,

4:29
and they divided people up into having a pamphlet about the importance of exercise and how to do the exercise versus having a physical therapist a exercise coach, somebody that was trained in oncology and exercise.

4:51
They looked at the disease-free survival over 10 years. So in other words, did these people get a recurrence of colovato cancer? Did they become stage Did they get another cancer? What they found was that the people who had the exercise coach or exercise trainer or PT had a better disease-free survival

5:19
the people that didn't? And when they put this into the simplest for every 16 people in the trial, exercise prevented one person from a recurrent cancer or a new And that's a pretty big deal.

5:40
what the exercise level was the equivalent of 45 minutes to an hour brisk walk three to four times a week. It didn't have to be a walk, work, but that ended up being the easiest thing for most people.

------ Kristine's exercise before and after diagnosis ------ 5:56

Elsa 5:57
And when I think about what Kristine does, I mean, before her diagnosis,

6:04
walked a lot. She walked during lunchtime at work. She did, you know, 15,000 steps a day, almost every single day.

6:16
and did some yoga classes but that was kind of her exercise level that she was starting with

6:23
now she is doing

6:27
probably 10 virtual exercise slash meditation classes a week

------ MSK Integrative Medicine at Home - virtual exercise program ------ 6:33

Elsa 6:34
These classes are through MSK's Integrative Medicine at Home program.

6:42
they have a fantastic exercise program that is 20 a month it's for cancer patients and care partners and they have been really important to Kristine so as I was talking about doing this episode on CRC and exercise Kristine's like well why don't you talk about why you signed me up for

7:10
MSK's exercise program and I had forgotten that I had done that um I signed her up when she was

7:20
getting her liver resection back in January 2022

7:29
before each of her surgeries Kristine has been asked to do something called preconditioning or prehabbing and that's where you do exercise before a surgery and that should make the healing process well the surgery itself and the healing process little easier

7:49
but what doesn't happen is talk about how to gain that strength back after a surgery I

8:01
mentioned that a little in the last episode where I talked about how helpful a home physical therapist had been for Kristine but this seems to be a problem across the board

8:17
not in some other cancers but definitely with colorectal cancer

8:23
so after her big liver surgery she started doing these all nine classes but she couldn't get through an entire class she had to build up the strength and the energy to be able to do that

8:40
and now between each of her rounds of chemo she uses these eight pound hand weights I know because I use the three pound ones uh honesty um but she has to work back up to those eight pound weights each time after each round of chemo

9:01
so there's a lot of motivation that's needed so when I talked to her about why she does exercise it's it's to battle the fatigue so she has less fatigue having maintains has less stress

9:20
now I'm reading some of her notes because I recorded this and I did a I did a really bad job with the first take of this podcast it was uh low energy and um not very good but she wrote some notes including some of her some of her thoughts that she wanted to get included

9:43
so this is a quote from her my motivation

9:47
I know in my mind it helps me get through treatment

9:51
chemo is thursday through saturday on sunday morning I'm ready to go with kickboxing and chair yoga so those are a couple classes that she does through msk she does a meditation class fitness for stronger bones fitness for everyone

10:12
qigong

10:14
tai chi

10:17
I know I'm missing some of the other ones

------ Finding other exercise classes - nationally and locally ------ 10:20

Elsa 10:21
in addition to msk's virtual exercise program Kristine does some other

10:28
virtual exercise classes with some other national groups she does some local in-person

10:37
exercise classes like yoga

10:40
that are just for cancer patients and care partners

10:44
and she's actually doing a yoga retreat next weekend so

10:51
what I wanted to make sure to say is that there are

10:56
resources that are out but

11:00
there also could be a lot more at this asco 25 conference

11:06
they were talking about you know there's been so many clinical trials about exercise and cancer over 3,000 of them most of them in breast cancer but this information is getting out and the importance of exercise and cancer is becoming scientifically proven

11:28
there are 2100 programs

11:33
in the US that involve some combination of exercise and oncology but

11:42
there are many rural and urban areas in the US that these programs are quite a distance away from patients so if they don't have anything virtual that not helpful for these

12:03
Less than 20% of cancer patients and

------ Cancer patients and survivors need motivation to exercise - care partners can help ------ 12:05

Elsa 12:05
survivors are meeting the exercise guidelines that have been set. So there's not enough that is

12:14
available for people. And then there's the fact that the cancer patient has to have such a high level of motivation. And that is where a care partner can be very helpful. And I had this in the first version of my podcast episode, but Kristine wrote this in all caps in her notes. The important role for care partners is to motivate.

12:49
So what does that motivation look like? It could be that you sign your loved one up for virtual exercise classes without asking them.

13:02
It could be that you do the exercise classes with your loved one.

13:09
It could be helping to create an easy way for them to exercise. Getting some lightweights,

13:21
walking with them, getting a

13:26
PT appointments set up, talking to the oncologist, to the nurse practitioner, finding out if your cancer center has an exercise program

13:38
that can help get some movement happening. It can start small and then it can build up because that's probably what's going to happen. And what I love about the MSK exercise classes is they're always mentioning about how, and that's everyone that I've either overheard as Kristine's doing it or the ones that I've done, is that it's important that you're doing some kind of movement. Maybe you're in a wheelchair. Maybe you can't bend very much. They'll talk about how to do different varieties of the same exercise based on your ability to move. And then they stay afterwards and talk about different ways that that exercise could be done in a personalized way.

14:37
Now, I want to be crystal clear about something for people that are listening to this that aren't in cancer land, or maybe you are, and you have been imprinted with our society's

14:57
connection of exercise and weight loss.

15:01
This exercise is not about losing weight. There have been studies that show that people that have a little extra weight actually do better with treatment. So it's not about that. When we're talking about exercise and cancer, we're talking about building strength, becoming more flexible, and being as healthy as possible to get through treatment, and maybe even making the treatment work better. I'm going to put links to some different exercise programs, such as MSKs, as well as articles that I talked about in the show notes.

Narration 15:50
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Care Partners Compass: Navigating CRC. Please listen up for the next episode, which will come out next week. If you subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app, you will know exactly when the next episode comes out.I hope that you'll share the podcast with your friends and family. The transcript of Care Partners Compass: Navigating CRC and additional links can be found on our website

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