Flow past post-cancer fatigue

There’s good news and there’s bad news when you look at cancer in the modern world. On the one hand, cancer rates are increasing, that’s the bad news. On the other hand, cancer survival rates are also increasing, which is the good news. To put some figures on this, in the past two decades overall cancer rates in Australia have increased by around 27 per cent. The leading cancer is prostate cancer with around 18,500 new cases diagnosed each year. However, if you look at the number of people who survive five years or more after diagnosis of prostate in the past two decades, that number has increased from 56 per cent to 92 per cent. Indeed, for all cancers, five-year survival rates have increased from 47 per cent to 66 per cent. This means that there are a lot more people out there living through cancer treatment.

The challenge with that is that cancer treatments can be taxing. so a new focus has to be on improving quality of life after cancer treatment. That is why a new study showing that qi gong can fight post-cancer treatment fatigue is very good news.

The study focused on prostate cancer survivors who had received androgen deprivation therapy. Androgens are male hormones that stimulate prostate cancer cells to grow. Lowering androgen levels or stopping them from getting into prostate cancer cells often makes prostate cancers shrink or grow more slowly for a time. The problem is that this treatment can cause a sense of physical or emotional, or even cognitive, exhaustion and fatigue that can last for months or years following treatment. Since people who have gone through androgen deprivation therapy are encouraged to use exercise as a non-drug method of combating this fatigue, these researchers wanted to see whether qi gong might be an effective form of that exercise.

Qi gong is an ancient Chinese form of movement exercise that promotes the flow of qi (chi – vital energy) through your body. Qi gong translates as “energy work” or “work with energy” in English and comprises exercises for stretching and mobilising the body and joints, breathing techniques, slow movement exercises, static postures, special walking methods and meditation. Each action aims to move your qi in a specific way, and the aim in all the movements is to increase the flow of qi through your mind and body.

For the study, the researchers had a group of men who were prostate cancer survivors and had an average age of 72 take part in one of two groups. For 12 weeks, one group took part in qi gong classes while the other group attended stretching classes. At the end of the 12 weeks, it was found that there had been a much higher attendance rate at the qi gong classes. Additionally, among those who had done the qi gong there was a significant decline in levels of fatigue distress compared to those who do the stretching.

It would seem that the mind-body elements of qi gong lead to benefits that physical exercise alone cannot bring. Although the word is being used in two different senses, it appears that working with your “energy” can give energy levels a boost and improve quality of life.