The direct effect of aerobic exercise in the metabolism of fat, lowered blood viscosity, and vastly improved oxygen transport has been fully described. It has been shown too, that physical fitness provides enormous protection against physical and emotional stress--in fact every single body function becomes more efficient, including the function of the immune system, a most crucial factor in cancer.

   Its protective effect against all disease can be clearly seen, regardless of all other factors, and it has been observed that the incidence of cancer among athletes is only one-seventh that of the average population. Although immensely effective, aerobic exercise cannot, however, convey full protection when the other cancer factors, which may include the stress of overtraining and intense competitions are severe.

   Studies by Dr Andervont (1944) and Dr Muhlbock (1950) of Holland, with laboratory mice susceptible to mammary cancer, demonstrated that by segregating them in different sized groups in different cages of different materials, the incidence of cancer among the females varied from 29% to 83%. In one experiment using two groups of mice caged under identical conditions but with one group provided with an exercise wheel, the group with no wheel had a cancer incidence of 67%, and the group with the exercise wheel only 43%. It was assumed that the exercise wheel provided a psychological advantage to the mice in that group, but it is more likely that the benefit was a physical one. Another study by the Labor Research Institute of Japan, reported in Prevention, February 1977, showed that mice given the carcinogen Lexzidine suffered 33% less cancer when an exercise wheel was provided to the experimental mice.

   Other tests on mice showed when a test group was fed only half the amount of food that was consumed by the control group, ie. the same food but only half as much, when carcinogens were added, only 2% of the test group developed cancer as against 40% of the controls. However, if the extra calories where burned up by exercise, the incidence in the control group was also only 2%.

The role of stress and personality

   Intense and prolonged stress has been shown clearly and specifically to be strongly associated with the onset of cancer. In this regard its effects are widespread.

1. Oxygen available to the tissue cells is decreased because of elevated blood fats and increased blood viscosity which follow stress.
2. It likewise decreases oxygen available to the lymphocytes, the protective white cells of the body's immune system, thus debilitating them.
3. The immune system, constantly stimulated by stress, becomes exhausted and impotent, the thymus shrunken.
4. Other hormonal upsets may occur.

   In this condition, the body's defensive white cells, although capable of destroying the cancer cells, make no effort to do so.

   Dr G.J. Nossal of Melbourne, in his book, Antibodies and Immunity (Nelson), discussing the destructive effect of x-rays on white cells says, "It is not unusual for human beings to have placed on them a stress as great as near-lethal (to the lymphocytes) x-irradiation".

   Whereas emotional stress appears to be the most significant stress factor, it should be remembered that faulty diet, alcohol and tobacco are also stress factors and that all stress factors are additive.

   Galen, the famed Greek physician of the 2nd Century AD attributed cancer to a melancholy disposition.

   A century ago the physician, Sir James Paget wrote: "The cases are so frequent in which deep anxiety, deferred hope and disappointment are quickly followed by the growth and increase of cancer, that we can hardly doubt that mental depression is a weighty additive to the other influences favoring the development of the cancerous constitution".

   Sir Heneage Ogilvie, a British surgeon, in his book, No Miracles Among Friends says: "The instances when the first recognizable onset of cancer has followed almost immediately on some disaster, a bereavement, the breakup of a relationship, a financial crisis, or an accident, are so numerous that they suggest that some controlling force that has hitherto kept this outbreak of cell communism in check has been removed".

   J. I. Rodale, a lifetime student and author on the subject of health, collated so much material linking state of mind with cancer that he wrote a book on the subject called Happy People Rarely Get Cancer.

   Dr Lawrence Le Shan, an experimental psychologist and research specialist, noticed this link among his patients over twenty years ago. He made a preliminary test to confirm for himself the link of emotional disturbance with cancer which involved 28 subjects, 15 patients with cancer, eight patients with no cancer and five free of disease. Considering emotional factors only, he correctly selected 14 out of 15 cancer patients, missing out on one patient with skin cancer. He incorrectly picked three patients, one with arteriosclerosis, one with allergy and one with hypothyroidism, as having cancer. The factors he considered were: loss of a crucial relationship and loss of purpose for living, the inability to express hostility, and emotional tension over the death of a parent, not necessarily recently. In 22 years of continued research, the syndrome of despair, the bleak hopelessness of ever achieving any meaning, zest or validity in life, he found to be the predominant factor. Seventy-six percent of all cancer patients studied, Dr Le Shan said, had this syndrome as against 10% of non-cancer patients.

   Historically, cancer rates have always been significantly higher in cities throughout the world. In the Scientific Australian, July 1979, it was reported that: "More than one-third of Sydney-siders suffer from depression, according to a survey conducted recently by Professor John Gibson at the Australian National University. The feelings ranged from deep melancholy to intense despair". The advent of cancer for the deposed Shah of Iran is understandable considering the enormous stress he suffered.

   Certain personality types are more susceptible, in our modern way of life, to cancer and other degenerative diseases. These types relate closely with the type'A' classification of Drs Rosenman and Friedman. In his book You Can Fight For Your Life (M. Evans & Co, NY 1977) Dr Le Shan says: "Cancer victims seem to have a strong life potential, creative, more inner 'fire'. This impression was so strong and consistent that I often found myself speculating whether cancer might not be a selective disease that is more likely to appear in those with the highest level of emotional force, especially if their lives did not allow for the full venting of that force".

   This is readily understandable inasmuch that the higher the intellect, the more exposed it is to the syndrome of "future shock", one of the most harmful factors of modern civilization*. The more creative and active a person is, the more they over-commit themselves to diverse personal relationships and projects until they become intolerably over-involved and therefore over-stressed. It would seem that, with higher aspirations and emotions, they not only reach higher peaks in life, but suffer greater depression from emotional set-backs.

*A study reported by the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation showed the cancer death rate among the mentally retarded was only one-fifth that of the general population, but that in paranoid patients the rate was higher.

   This type of person, however, has the best record of recovery from cancer. When they are down, they count their blessings and get up again. A report published in April 1978 by the Institute of Neotic Sciences, San Francisco, by Dr C. Simonton, former chief of radiation therapy at Travis Air Force Base, and psychologist, Jeanne Achterberg and Stephanie Matthews, remarked that people who show remarkable powers to resist the ravages of cancer seem to display special personality traits. "They are verbal, confrontive, at times scrappy but generally receptive and highly creative people." The report rated these people highly in the qualities of nonconformity, ego strength, self-control, self-reliance, independence and energy. This too is readily understandable as such people do not easily accept defeat and even without knowledge of cause and effect, would attempt lifestyle changes in a determined effort to survive. In many cases just one or two commonsense changes would make the vital swing to the right side of a borderline condition.

   It is Dr Le Shan's opinion that it is not the fear of death--a negative emotion--that marshals the body's resources for survival. Instead, it is the positive emotion of the wish to live that provides the vital force.

   In his book You Don't Have to Die, Dr Harry S. Hoxsey says: "Cancer is not only a disease, it is also a psychosis. Tell a victim he is hopeless (or let him discover if from his family) and the will to live becomes paralyzed. Show him a way out, strip him of fear and hysteria, give him even a forlorn hope, and the will to live is stimulated. It becomes a powerful ally in the battle against death".

Relief of stress by drugs

   As described in the discussion of the role of the immune system which follows, tranquilizers and other drugs have a depressing effect on the immune system and are therefore harmful to a cancer patient. However, a report in the New Scientist (August 21, 1980) is of interest. It comes from British gerontologist, Dr Stephen Fulder, and describes a substance, assumed to be a drug, called eleutherococcus which is derived from a plant from the same plant family as ginseng. It acts as a tonic and helps people resist stress, without adverse side effects. The report concludes:

   "The most prestigious specialist medical institutes in the USSR have recently found eleutherococcus useful as an adjunct to other medicines in hastening the cure of chronic conditions such as chronic pneumonia, chronic tuberculosis, and vascular dystonia. Oncology institutes in several regions of the USSR, including the Petrov Oncological Institute in Leningrad, reported success in improving the general health of patients with cancer, and reducing the chances of metastasis (the development of secondary tumors). It was also found useful in reducing the debilitating effects of radiotherapy and chemotherapy and therefore allowing higher doses to be given. The same goes for ginseng. Its glycosides have recently been shown to hasten the recovery of patients after serious operations, considerably shortening their dependence on the hospital and reducing complications. Trials with healthy* people have been extensive in the Soviet Union. The biggest was organized at the Volga car plant in Togliatti, in which eleutherococcus was given to no fewer than 80,000 workers with a consequent reduction in various illnesses and therefore in work losses."

*As in all industrialized countries, most people are not really healthy but are assumed to be so in the absence of definite sickness.

   This form of therapy, like other herbal therapy and megavitamin therapy, although doubtlessly beneficial as described, would be superfluous if the diet were correct in the first place.

   It should be realized, of course, that many people live highly stressed and emotional lives without getting cancer. The prerequisite for the onset of cancer is the development of the pre-cancerous state of the body's tissued--the "cancer milieu". Countless people live for years with the cancer milieu without the occurrence of cancer growths, but the advent of severe stress with its depressing effect on the body's defenses is all that is needed, when in this condition, for cancer to advance, and grow.