Cancer researcher and Assistant Professor Yue Liao from the Department of Kinesiology noted that after completing a 12-week group-based exercise program, cancer survivors improved their quality-of-life physical activity level and physical functioning.
Survivors Of Cancer Make Progress In Community Fitness Programs
Physical activity (PA) stress reduction and dietary therapies provide both physical and emotional benefits in cancer survival. Fitness indices, body composition quality of life (QOL), fatigue, and mental health are all improved in males with prostate cancer (PC). Peer assistance is also provided via interventions delivered in a group context. Cancer survivors might benefit from community-based PA programs as well.
To survive any type of cancer is believed as a huge achievement. Those who have experienced this disease and were freed from the same also prove an inspiration for many who suffer from this disease. In the latest study, it is seen that most of the survivors, irrespective of their age and type, try to remain fit for life. They also take part actively in various community fitness programs. The experts have checked many people who are a regular part of such fitness activities in different regions.
Liao, the study’s co-lead author, and her colleagues discovered that community-based programs could reach and support cancer survivors while also increasing their physical functioning. The researchers concentrated their efforts on minority and medically poor cancer survivors who frequently lack physical exercise resources.
“My new pilot study is looking to understand how we can help people maintain those behaviors,” she said. “I want to explore if cancer survivors can maintain their new behaviors once the program is finished.”
The researchers looked at participants in the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas-funded Active Living After Cancer (ALAC) program. Liao’s research is continuing, and she’s looking into how survivors can keep the positive effects of these evidence-based programs going.
Liao hopes to recruit volunteers for her study among those who have completed the ALAC program or who are currently enrolled in or plan to enroll in UTA’s FitSteps for Life program. FitSteps for life is a research-based cancer rehabilitation program that aims to help cancer survivors achieve and maintain as much functional mobility and endurance as possible during their treatment.
Project REMOTE: Research to Examine Exercise Motivation is the name of Liao’s new pilot project. It employs wearable sensors to track participants’ daily activities and a smartphone app to poll participants’ feelings, symptoms, views, and motives, as well as contextual elements connected to their physical activity habits.
This technique gives her high-resolution data on the factors that influence motivation and the obstacles that prevent people from exercising in their daily lives.
PC survivors’ opinions after participating in a PA intervention have been studied in a few qualitative research. Participants believe that group exercise is a good way to get both fitness and peer support. Some people prefer the exercise environment to a peer support group because it allows them to be more open about their experiences with PC.
Participants can engage in problem-focused action-oriented coping techniques in an exercise context which gives them a sense of control confidence in their abilities and body awareness, as well as a welcome distraction from disease-related side effects.
“I hope to capture a wide range of cancer survivors in their stages of behavior change,” Liao said. “That includes those who are thinking about making a behavior change currently making a change maintaining a behavior or failing to maintain a behavior.
I’d like to better understand the motivation that is related to physical activity and the patients’ daily experiences and then look at what else may be needed for behavioral maintenance for these populations.”
