Astronauts’ exercise ideal for cancer patients

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- lar to the physical stress cancer patients experiment during chemotherapy and other treatments, according to researchers.

For that reason, the researchers suggest that the countermeasures program used by astronauts before,

- tain their health could be developed and applied for cancer patients to help them recover after treatment.

The details were published in a commentary written by researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on Thursday in the journal Cell. The work was supported by the National Cancer Institute.

“It was surprising when we looked at similarities between rigors and challenges cancer patients during treatment.

Both have a decrease in muscle mass, and they have bone demineralization and changes in heart function,” said Jessica Scott, senior author and an exercise physiology researcher at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Exercise Oncology Service.

“Astronauts may get something called space fog, where they have trouble focusing or get a little forgetful. That’s very similar to what some cancer patients experience, which is called chemo brain.”

But astronauts and cancer patients are advised in a completely different way from each other, despite the similar issues they face.

The authors of the commentary looked at the countermeasures program created by NASA to see how it might be applied to cancer patients.

A truck is passing the thick snow along Tournon-sur-Rhone in eastern France. France’s weather service alerted 11 departments in the south east of the country after temperatures dropped to -8 degrees Celsius, signalling an early winter snow in the whole Europe.