Today is Motivation Monday. I did the rower for a half an hour and used the standardized bike for an hour. Today is my half birthday. In honor of this occasion, the topic we will be discussing, why do cancer rates increase as we age?

As we age, our risk of developing cancer increases, now researchers at the University of Colorado Cancer Center say that this is because our tissue landscape changes as we age.

The study is published in the journal Oncogene.

A researcher at the University of Colorado Cancer Center explained:

An individual already accumulates a large percentage of the mutations they will have during their lifetime by the time they stop growing in their teens.

He explains: “There’s a mismatch between the mutation curve and the cancer curve, meaning that if cancer were due to reaching a tipping point of say, five or six mutations, we should see higher cancer rates in 20-year-olds, as this is when mutation rate is highest.”

Furthermore, healthy tissues are also full of oncogenic mutations. He says: “These mutations are many times more common than the cancers associated with them.” In other words, more mutations do not mean more cancer.

In addition, he explains that as humans have evolved, our bodies have had to develop new mechanisms to maintain our tissues and avoid disease.

He explains: “But we’re no better at preventing mutations than our yeast or bacteria cousins. You’d think if avoiding mutations was key to avoiding cancer, we’d be better at it than we are.”

He also argues that if these oncogenes were able to take over surrounding tissue, then introducing oncogenes into mice stem cells should help these cells survive instead of hurting them. He continued: “Rather stem cells harboring the oncogenes tend to get weeded out.”

The reason the risk of cancer increases with age is because the mechanisms that we have when we are younger to fight cancer deteriorate.

The body’s healthy cells function best for healthy, younger tissue conditions. When this balance is changed, for instance, through oncogenic mutation, the cells no longer represent the optimum fit for the surroundings, as healthy cells in young bodies quickly become more successful than cells with cancerous mutations.

He concluded: “When tissue is old, healthy cells are no longer a perfect fit, and mutations might help a cancer cell adapt in ways a healthy cell can’t.”

Today is fit Friday. Today at the gym I biked for an hour on the standardized bike and my legs needed to be stretched out.

It is prostate cancer awareness month so today’s question is: can bike riding up prostate cancer risk?

Researchers found that cyclists who bike more may face a higher risk of prostate cancer, but not a greater chance of infertility or erectile dysfunction.

The findings aren’t definitive, and they conflict with previous research on impotence and infertility. Other experts pointed to the study’s weaknesses, and lead author Dr. Milo Hollingworth, a research associate at University College London, acknowledged that the findings are “difficult to interpret.”

“Men shouldn’t worry about increasing their risk of prostate cancer by cycling,” he stressed. “Men should cycle as much as they did before. The benefits for your heart, lungs, whole body and mental health are much more important.”

Previous research has suggested that bike riding for more than three hours a week boosts the risk of mild to moderate erectile dysfunction, said Dr. Chris Oliver, a consultant orthopedic surgeon with the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in Scotland. Other studies have also linked bike riding to infertility in men.

In the new study, researchers surveyed more than 5,000 male cyclists from 2012 to 2013.

Eight percent of the men reported erectile dysfunction problems, although they weren’t more common in men who biked more. The investigators did find links between erectile dysfunction and three factors — high blood pressure, smoking and older age.

The researchers didn’t find any link between more cycling and more cases of infertility, which 1 percent of the men reported.

As for prostate cancer, just under 1 percent of the men overall reported being diagnosed with it. Those who biked the most, more than 8.5 hours a week, were much more likely to have prostate cancer than the other men, although the study doesn’t prove there’s an actual connection between the two.

Of the 498 men who biked the most, 17 said they had prostate cancer (3.5 percent). Of those who biked the least, three out of 511 (0.5 percent) said they had prostate cancer, the findings showed.

The trends held up after the researchers adjusted their statistics so they wouldn’t be thrown off by factors such as large or small numbers of men of certain ages.

What should men do? “Don’t stop cycling because of this study,” said Oliver, the surgeon in Scotland. The study is small, “not statistically significant” and based on anonymous responses from the Internet.

However, he did recommend that men get a good bike seat, known as a saddle. Bike seats have been implicated in infertility and erectile problems caused by bike riding, and bike seat manufacturers have tried to design better seats.

“Don’t worry about this study,” Oliver said. “Just keep riding.”

Today is Weight Wednesday. I focused today on doing lat pull downs, rows, pull ups, pullies, and chest presses. I am now doing 4 repetitions of 20 at 20 pounds each exercise. I am starting to see my arms bulk up and my upper body is becoming stronger in just one week. I know some girls think it’s manly to lift weights but not marathoners. See the picture of me below:

It is prostate cancer awareness month, so I wanted today’s question to talk about this type of cancer. Does weight training decrease symptoms of prostate cancer?

Prostate cancer is the scourge of the ageing male. It can develop silently with few symptoms, progress slowly, or sometimes rapidly once a critical point is reached, and may require surgery and perhaps drug treatment to cure or slow its development. The prostate is a walnut-size gland just below the bladder and it produces seminal fluid but not sperm.

In most men over 50, the prostate gland grows and may block the flow of urine to some extent, but this is not prostate cancer only ‘benign prostate hypertrophy’ and it has little to do with prostate cancer, which can spread beyond the prostate.

Because the male hormone testosterone seems to cause most prostate cancers to grow, one of the treatments for prostate cancer is the delivery of drugs to stop the body producing or using testosterone as it normally does, the result being a slowing or cessation of the cancer growth. The problem with this approach is that without testosterone various unwanted health effects occur: reduced muscle strength and bone mass and increased risk of fractures, increased fat mass and reduced muscle mass, unfavorable cholesterol levels and depression and mood swings.

Researchers from the School of Exercise, Biomedical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University in Western Australia attempted to find out the answer to the above question. They studied 10 men aged 59-82 yr on androgen deprivation for localized prostate cancer before and after progressive resistance training for 20 weeks at 6-12-repetition maximum (RM) for 12 upper- and lower-body exercises in a university exercise rehabilitation clinic. The exercises included the chest press, seated row, shoulder press, lat pull-down, triceps extension, biceps curl, leg press, squat, leg extension, leg curl, abdominal crunch, and back-extension exercises.

Results

The research team tested the subjects at the beginning of the study, at 10 weeks and at 20 weeks for elements of body composition, strength, exercise performance and blood parameters. Here is what they found.

Body composition

There were no significant overall changes to body fat, muscle mass or bone mineral density in the group. Note, however, the quadricep muscle mass improvement noted below.

Muscle strength and endurance

A significant increase in muscle strength and endurance was noted for the exercises tested for the upper and lower body. Thigh quadricep muscle size increased significantly — in some subjects up to 15 percent.

Exercise performance

After 20 weeks of training there was a significant improvement in physical performance in the nominated exercises of chair rise, stair climbing, and walking tests with incremental performance improvements at 10 weeks and up to 20 weeks.

Blood parameters

There were no significant differences in PSA, hormones or hemoglobin blood measurements.

What Do the Results Mean?

Even though the study could have produced more meaningful results had it been a randomized study where two groups were chosen — one group chosen randomly to perform the weight training and another to act as a ‘control’ group — nevertheless, the positive aspects of the study are that strength increased and muscle and bone mass did not decrease significantly nor did fat mass increase. These are the crucial factors likely to be adversely affected in hormone depletion treatment, so overall the results are very promising.

The bottom line is that if you do find yourself in such a prostate cancer treatment situation, weight training can probably help you to maintain important elements of physical function and health while undergoing the best treatment as recommended by your specialist.

Yesterday, I went for a second trip to the podiatrist to have him take a look at my left foot. He said that the residual fracture is fully healed since he took another xray but I need to take advil three times a day for the next week to get down the swelling.

Today is Motivation Monday. I did the rower for a half an hour and used the standardized bike for an hour.

Yesterday was the NYC Marathon. Thousands of runners participated either as a charity runner, qualifier, or was chosen by NYRR as a raffle winner. This marathon is one of the elite marathons a runner would be dying to run in. With this marathon in mind, does running lower the risk of cancer? Cancer patients use exercise as an outlet to stay positive and stay healthy.

The below information is from Runner’s World:

Many serious runners still wonder about the effects of their 25 (and then some) miles a week. RW readers aside, runners like this are so rare, representing way less than one percent of the U.S. population, that they don’t turn up in cancer studies. Still, two 2005 epidemiological studies–one with 22,000 Finnish men and 24,000 Finnish women; the other with 116,000 American nurses–found lower all-cause mortality rates, including cancer deaths, among more physically active participants. Similar studies have shown that cancer deaths generally decline as exercise levels increase.

Epidemiologist Steven Blair, the president and CEO of the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas, is one of the world-leading experts on exercise and longevity. While he notes that the book is still open on cancer rates among serious exercisers, he says, “In our most relevant work on this topic, we do not see any higher cancer risk in the most fit or most highly active individuals. In fact, the highest activity or fitness groups consistently had the lowest mortality rates.”