Men who keep active by walking at least 30 minutes a day while completing their radiation therapy for prostate cancer might be preventing fatigue symptoms.

Fatigue is considered a common symptom of cancer patients and often is caused by the physical toll the disease takes upon the body. In many cases, cancer patients are advised to rest and take it easy, which often results in the patient placing limitations upon their daily activities.

Experts explained that the danger of too much rest is that it could lead to a de-conditioning of the muscles and reduce the person's ability to perform daily everyday tasks. On the contrary, regular daily exercise helps keep the muscles in good condition and enables people to perform daily activities without overexerting themselves. Experts noted the other benefit of exercising was that it reduced symptoms of depression, which could change the person's outlook on fatigue.

In a study, researchers randomly divided 66 men diagnosed with prostate cancer into two groups, an exercise group and a control group. The exercise group was required to walk for 30 minutes three times a week. The participants in the control group were told to follow through with their everyday activities and to slow down if they started to feel fatigued.

After going through four weeks of radiation therapy, the men in the control group were showing higher levels of fatigue than they did going into the treatment. Also, they continued to exhibit signs of weariness one month later. On the other hand, the men in the exercise group didn't exhibit any distinct signs of fatigue throughout the entirety of the study.

Experts stated they hoped to use these findings to conduct further studies on patients with other forms of cancer such as cervical, bladder and kidney.

Yahoo News August 18, 2004