Even walking the dog may help cancer sufferers
Macmillan Cancer Support's new programme called Move More, is aimed at all of us who have experienced cancer of one form or another. Exercise – just two and a half hours a week – has been shown to help breast cancer patients reduce their chance of recurrence and mortality by up to 40 per cent, bowel cancer patients up to 50 per cent and prostate cancer sufferers by up to 30 per cent.
Walking my two dogs in one of my local parks in west London this morning, I noticed that some new outdoor exercise machines had appeared. I have seen these before in other parks and thought what a good idea they are and, perhaps, they will encourage everyone to take much-needed exercise. Ciaran Devane, Chief Executive of Macmillan, thinks that "physical activity services should be prescribed to all cancer patients".
Years ago, it was considered better to rest after surgery or illness but now this must be balanced with walking, running, dancing, working out at the gym – and you do not even have to belong to a health club; the parks hold the answer.
Thanks to my work, I have always been physically active and, since developing breast cancer, I have tried to discipline myself to go swimming or to the gym at least twice a week – and, of course, the dogs require daily exercise. In fact, as I have written before, I am convinced that walking the dogs every day of my six weeks of radiotherapy helped me both physically and mentally.
I think that having the responsibility for and company of any animal at a time of illness means not just companionship but a reason to keep going. With this response in mind, Pets as Therapy (P.A.T.) dogs and cats visit hospitals, hospices, special needs schools, nursing and care homes. The animals bring a sense of the real world into a medical environment and patients find peace and restfulness through stroking and talking to the animals. Dogs and cats definitely sense illness in a person and react accordingly.
We don't understand how animals know when we are ill but we do appreciate their acute sense of smell and have harnessed this to help medical diagnoses. A friend of mine sent me an email about HeroRATs.
In Tanzania, at the Tuberculosis Detection Centre, APOPO's HeroRATs – with splendid whiskers and an exceptional sense of smell – have been trained to run the length of their cages sniffing samples of patients' sputum which has been placed under each of 10 holes. If TB is smelt, the rat keeps its nose in the hole and scratches the surface. For this piece of work the HeroRATs are rewarded with food – bananas being a favourite. So far these rats – who are treated like the stars they are – have prevented at least 22,000 infections.
The dog's sensitive nose – which we see illustrated in airports, after earthquakes and with the bomb squad (HeroRAts are great at detecting landmines too) – is now being used in cancer detection and, sometimes, long before any symptoms appear.
In prostate cancer – where the PSA test can prove to have false positive readings – dogs are trained to sniff urine samples and are producing accurate results. Similarly – there is "sniffing" research with dogs on skin bladder and ovarian cancers,
A lady in the USA whose dog, Floyd, sniffed, nudged, nipped and pawed at her right breast for four days continuously, finally went to her doctor who diagnosed breast cancer. Her breast surgical oncologist said her patient's life was definitely saved by the dog – whether or not the dog could smell the tumour itself or, as the oncologist says, perhaps a more likely explanation was that the dog could smell the cancer on its owner's breath.
Lung cancer has a unique smell and dogs are being trained specifically to sniff the person's breath and detect this form of cancer.
Researchers are just beginning to learn how to decipher clues from a person's breath. It is known already that cancer releases certain organic compounds which can be detected in the breath. Will we, perhaps, one day be able to predict cancer from a deep breath?
A former Playboy playmate of the year was sentenced to nine years in state prison after pleading no contest to attempted voluntary manslaughter in the 2010 shooting of her husband, prosecutors said Wednesday.
