The Exercise-Medicine specialist Robert Newton analyses how cancer patients benefit from structured exercise – alongside pharmaceutical treatments – and specifically from Technogym’s Biostrength.
Technogym’s HQ in Cesena – the Technogym Village – recently hosted yet another prominent personality of the health & well-being scenario, world-renowned professor of Exercise Medicine in Oncology, Robert Newton. The day-long workshop held by Newton focused on how exercise medicine applies to cancer management and included theoretical notions, practical demonstration, and the analysis of meaningful case studies.
Professor Newton is an exercise-medicine specialist at Edith Cowan University’s Exercise Medicine Research Institute, which he established himself in 2004 in Perth, Australia. Dr Newton is also a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) – the world’s leading sport-medicine association – of which Technogym serves as official partner, fostering the ‘Exercise Is Medicine’ campaign.
As a specialist and promoter of structured physical activity in medical prescriptions, Newton’s seminar at the Technogym Village essentially addressed the positive influence targeted exercise protocols have on tumour patients. It’s been proven such treatment programmes – combined with traditional pharmaceutical therapies – slow down or even inverse the worsening of their quality of life, bodily strength, composition, and functionality.
As a matter of fact, until not long-ago physical activity was believed to have negative effects on the tumour, possibly making it grow faster. Research conducted in the last decades not only proved this to be a groundless theory but confirmed the opposite: targeted and structured exercise protocols fight chemotherapy and radio-therapy side effects and improve their efficacy whilst lengthening life expectancy.
While visiting the Technogym Village, Professor Newton granted a special mention to Technogym’s Biostrength equipment in the management and treatment of cancer patients. Focusing on men suffering from prostate cancer, Newton highlighted how one of the main side effects of their pharmaceutical therapy is the suppression of testosterone, whose main consequence is a significant loss of muscle mass. It was highlighted how Biostrength – and its adjustable eccentric overload function in particular – greatly helps fighting and inverting this trend thanks to its hypertrophy programme. What’s more, Biostrength equipment comes in a wide and growing variety of products, making it possible to target several different muscle groups.
Professor Newton also praised Technogym’s and Biostrength’s digital services, which make it possible to keep the patients’ motivation and commitment high (not easy with cancer patients in particular); they also allow to accurately monitor the single patient’s progress and efficacy of the treatment protocol thanks to the data-driven approach. Technogym’s digital ecosystem allows a superior guidance both for sector specialists and patients, getting the most out of the exercise therapy.
