Improving Cancer Survival with Exercise
.jpg "Jennifer LeMoine, PhD, on her way to enjoying the health benefits of exercise")
.jpg "The atrium of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center")
Jennifer LeMoine, PhD, practices what she preaches. A researcher in the emerging field of “human bioenergetics” – the advanced scientific study of human exercise physiology - LeMoine has just completed her third marathon, this one held in Frederick, Maryland.
She will tell you that she doesn’t just feel better doing footraces, triathlons and marathons, she knows she is better – training improves the functioning of her body in every way, from building more myocyte cells and protein in her muscle tissue to increasing her VO2max, which is the transport and utilization of oxygen during aerobic activity.
LeMoine, a postdoctoral fellow working since last August in the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, believes that the advantages she sees from exercise in herself and in others she has studied can also be of benefit to cancer patients, even elderly survivors.
“With exercise, changes happen on the gene, cell, metabolic, and overall whole-body level to improve cardiovascular fitness, physical function, muscular strength, and so on,” she says. “Knowing that all of those changes occur, I’m now focused on finding out how we can help cancer survivors to become more physically active, and why physical activity is important both to prevent cancer and cancer recurrence and to improving key aspects of survivorship health.”
LeMoine is working with Priscilla Furth, MD, a professor of oncology who is an expert in exercise and cancer, and Jeanne Mandelblatt, MD, MPH, a geriatrician with training in cancer epidemiology and population sciences, to deliver physical activity to older cancer survivors and to study the outcomes – right down to the level of genes and cells. This will be the first research of its kind at Lombardi, she says. LeMoine and Furth presented a piece of that research, on the cardiovascular fitness of cancer survivors, at the American College of Sports Medicine in Seattle in May.
The researchers are also developing in-clinic testing methods of cardiovascular fitness and function for cancer survivors, to be used in this and similar physician-run settings to prescribe exercise to these individuals. “Our overall research goal is to investigate the interplay between physiological and molecular-level changes brought about by exercise and the cancer process, from prevention to preventing recurrence and improving overall survivorship health,” LeMoine says.
She says the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center provides her with the “perfect environment for my research direction. Exercise physiology is a new field in oncology, and the opportunity to link the cancer biology process to exercise outcomes is very exciting.”
LeMoine never thought she would end up studying the scientific underpinnings of exercise. She swam as a child growing up in North Carolina and played soccer in high school, but became, as she recalls, “very unhealthy” while in college at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. “I didn’t exercise, I overslept to the point that I sometimes skipped morning classes,” she recalls. But in her last semester before graduating with a psychology degree, LeMoine took some extra credit courses in weight training and exercise, and “just loved it. I saw results quickly. My energy increased, I began sleeping right.”
That experience led her to seek a Master’s degree in exercise physiology at East Carolina University and then she enrolled in a doctoral program in human bioenergetics at Ball State University in Indiana, one of the foremost programs of its type. She worked with high-risk individuals, such as the aged and morbidly obese, to understand the different physical changes that occur with exercise and inactivity. LeMoine looked at everything from changes in key structural proteins in skeletal muscle and tendon biopsies to calculating muscle volume changes in older individuals with resistance training.
She learned that, for the most part, older people respond to exercise to the same degree as younger people, and that a 70 year-old who is a lifelong exerciser can have better aerobic capacity than a sedentary 25 year-old.
“People think that you feel good when you exercise because of those happy hormones – endorphins – but it’s so much more than that! The body is changing; energy is increasing,” she says.
LeMoine adds that the aged especially need to keep up their muscle strength or they can lose independence. “Muscles lose size and strength and aerobic capacity, and it becomes harder to move around.”
She is especially interested in helping older cancer survivors, those 65 and above, to maintain or increase their strength. LeMoine also wants to understand whether physical declines are linked in cancer treatment, and if exercise can reverse those declines and also help retard cancer recurrence.
Enough epidemiological studies have shown that exercise helps prevent cancer development that the American Cancer Society issued cancer prevention guidelines in 2006, saying that at least 30 minutes a day of dedicated to exercise is needed to reduce cancer risk. But LeMoine says the pathways responsible for those benefits have not been well-defined. “The molecular side of this is very important as well, so we want to see if exercise decreases inflammation, or excess production of insulin, which are both risk factors for cancer development,” she says.
“I love my job,” LeMoine says. “I really believe in and have experienced the benefits of a healthy and active lifestyle, and combining that personal passion with my professional endeavors in the field of cancer survivorship is a joy.”
By Renee Twombly, GUMC Communications
