Benefits of exercising for breast cancer patients

• Physical functioning 
• Quality of life
• Muscle strength
• Bone health
• Self-esteem

Exercise

Exercise plays a significant role in the recovery of breast cancer patients. It not only helps in physical fitness but helps you be stress-free as well. It helps in decreasing depression, fatigue, anxiety, and other issues. Exercise also lowers the risk of cancer recurrence.
Let’s see how exercise improves our life in various aspects:

Physical Functioning:

After breast cancer surgery, you may experience slight changes or restrictions in the physical functioning of your body. Women often complain about stiffness in arm, difficulty in hand movement, etc after going through the treatment of breast cancer.

Medicines may help but along with medicine, it is also advisable that one opts for simple exercises to ease the overall physical functioning of the body.

Although exercises are simple enough to follow one must always consult a general practitioner or physiotherapist about it.

Quality of Life:

Quality of life comprises of combined factors of happiness, health, and comfort by an individual.

Breast cancer diagnosis and treatments lead to decreased Quality of Life in women. However, uplifting your quality of life is more of a self-help approach than a medical one.

It starts with you.

Start doing what you love. Find your comfort, it will automatically find happiness. Try to find a healthy way of doing it and there it is, your personal Mantra of improving your Quality of Life. For Eg: Say you have a passion for dancing, join Zumba or Aerobics. Those are again a good form of exercise. If still not comfortable with it dance in your home. Just put on music and do your moves. Doesn’t matter if you do it correctly. Your house, your music, your moves.

Muscle strength:

Your body reacts in different ways to breast cancer treatment you receive. Some complain about the lack of muscle strength while some complain about stiffness. Some find that they have gained weight while some discover a significant loss in weight.

Doctors may recommend medicines to gain muscle strength but what really helps are few exercises. They are the natural way to gain muscle strength. Start out with a few simple ones like walking, jogging, skipping, climbing stairs, cycling, etc. Once you start getting comfortable with these go for the muscle-building ones like push-ups, squats, lifting weights. The advantage of all these exercises is that you don’t feel weak anymore. At least not health-wise. The regular complains of stiffness, lack of muscle strength is slowly reduced to a point you don’t feel it anymore. Thus, you slowly regain your Muscle Strength

Bone health

Most women suffering from Breast Cancer suffer from Osteoporosis as a side effect. Osteoporosis is when your bones lose density and strength. Unfortunately, this is very common in breast cancer patients’ due to their treatments and medications. To recover the bone health due to such reasons is not a simple task as along with decreased bone health, patients go through other issues as well. To regain a normal bone strength, one must make sure that there is a proper intake of required nutrients on a daily basis. This can be done through medications or also by following a balanced diet with a sufficient amount of vitamins, proteins, and minerals as they help in increasing bone health. Along with a balanced diet, it is always good to do exercises in order to build Bone strength. Consult your practitioner or physiotherapist as you might want to be careful about which exercises to follow. Refrain from going through high-intensity weight training exercises as you might pull a muscle or harm yourself worse due to lack of habit. There are many tutorials available on youtube to help out for exercises for beginners you could always follow them. 

Self-Esteem:

Low self-esteem and doubting our own femininity are some of the common issues women come across while going through breast cancer treatment. It’s more of a “How will I fit in society?” they ask themselves. They are at a total loss of self-esteem. What you need to know though is that if you need to feel good on the outside then you need to start feeling good on the inside. Times like these exercises like Yoga and Meditation greatly helps. Yoga consists of simple breathing exercises, few stretches relieve us of stress and bring a very soothing effect on your body. Meditation helps to relax our mind and has a calming effect on our bodies. Yoga and Meditation help you bring an inner peace that is exactly what you have to achieve. Being at peace with your inner self, Healing from Within. Smile, you survived. Clap for yourself, you did good in your battle.

Socialize…It’s going to be difficult at first, but you will get there. Remember you have gone through worse.

Start with baby steps like going for a walk along with your neighbors. Going out for an evening with peers or for a game with friends once in a while. And there you have it. STRETCH, SMILE, SOCIALIZE.

The 3s and you are highly progressing on your way of improving your self-esteem.