A Tel-Aviv medical study has found that high-intensity exercise can reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by up to 72 per cent

Same exact thing we have seen for years where a bit of exercise goes a long way towards health. Most people like 90mins/week are probably doing most of it up in this high intensity zone...

High-intensity means different things to different people. In general, something like a 20 minute walk two or three times a week makes a gigantic difference for nearly all.

I am also curious what the scientifists think.

High-intensity does mean a lot of different things to different people, in terms of pace.

A 20 minute walk is never considered high-intensity, and does not match the description the study is suggesting. A 20 minute walk is going to be aerobic, especially if the HR of the walker is under 80% of MHR.

In order to utilize the the metabolic pathways for sugars, it needs to utilize anaerobic pathways and FOG or FG fibers.

A 20 minute walk for an older person that includes repeats of short hills might be considered high intensity.

The study is epedemiological, not RCT, so that is more likely to conflate correlation and causation, but one finding in the paper itself that I found interesting, albeit only on mice, is that exercise that is known to activate the mTOR pathway — the same pathway implicated in cancerous growth among many other things — also has a shielding effect that is *reversed* by rapamycin injection that is commonly used as a cancer drug (with questionable effectiveness) by limiting mTOR signaling. If that sounds confusing, you get it. :)

“The protective effects of exercise were dependent on mTOR activity, and inhibition of the mTOR pathway with rapamycin treatment ex vivo reversed the exercise-induced metabolic shield.”

Yeah, i don't think 20 min walk is enough. The article suggests 80-85% MHR, which is much higher intensity than just walking. The average non-runner would freak over this (my wife did), as it sounds like a really good high school mark. They don't realize that experienced marathoners average that intensity for 26 miles, and top end marathoners are >90%. Don't HIIT classes start at around 80% max for beginners?

That being said, is 80% is enough? If you run long enough, the motor units with FG and FOG fibers are recruited as type I fiber motor units are exhausted. 85% will get you there faster.

A nice coincidence about 85%: in order to recruit FG/FOG fibers when strength training, it's suggested that one work with at least 85% 1-rep max (this corresponds to about 5 rep max). On my last few sets of 5-8 reps squat sets, my HR is hitting at least 85% MHR, closer to 90% for 8 reps at RPE 9-9.5.

There's already a well-developed metabolic angle in cancer research geared toward starving cancer cells with a ketogenic diet

SCIENCE!

Does that mean that rapamycin could negate the benefits of exercise in regards to cancer?

but the article specifically mentions high-intensity aerobic exercise

I wanted to say that, but sugar might as well be heroin any more. A1C pill commercials non-stop.

Science, the religion of the 21th century.

The magic words that all believers worship : "it has scientifically been proven that", "a medical/scientific study shows", "an expert says".

Yes, that is what this study is finding, but it should be taken with a grain of salt both because that finding is on mice and ex vivo, and it’s actually not clear that rapamycin would be a net negative in regards to metastasis risk even on exercising animals who develop cancer.

It depends on what their HR is at. Even at 61, a 20 min walk with repeats of short hills doesn't do much in elevating my HR.

An hour long HIIT session on the spin bike or several 600m full-throttle repeats at the track easily elevates my HR in the 90%+ max range.

Even though I can only run one day a week because of post-traumatic OA & some age-related musculoskeletal degenerative problems, I'm doing HIIT on the bike 3 times per week in addition to weight training.

As you get older - train smart but train hard. It's the best anti-aging formula right now.

Or...you could just avoid consuming sugar (and carbs which metabolize as such) in the first place and as a bonus avoid the loads of carcinogens that plants use to defend themselves.

acsh.org

99.99% of Pesticides We Eat Are Produced by Plants Themselves

Plants produce pesticides to keep insects and other herbivores away. When we eat fruits and vegetables, we eat those pesticides, too. In fact, nearly all of the pesticides we consume in our diet are produced by the plants the...

Open link

The study defines "high intensity exercise" twice. One was 30 minutes at a pace the subject could hold for 30 minutes. The second was 30 minutes at 75% MaxHR.

Plus, their final note "Further, because Olympic athletes and professional athletes are not immune from developing cancer, even with their high intensity training regimens (64), and exercise intensity depends on an individual’s ability, proposing a personalized exercise regime for each patient might provide better clinical outcomes."