Wow congrats to all of you. My mother was diagonsed with breast cancer a little over 7 years ago, she decided to try herbs instead of chemo, and had very very good sucess so much so, that last year when they did did her mamogram, they redid it, thinking someone had switched the films as there was nothing there, just normal breast tissue. But the second one showed the same as the first. So now she’s completey cleared as a cancer paticent.
I believe exercise is very very important during chemo and especially after it. There are a few things to be aware of if you've had chemo:
1. Do weight training as Chemo will take a bit of the calicum out of your bones, and have a higher percentage of calicum in your diet. 2. Also do as much cardio as you can, as it will help fight the cancer as well as the chemo affects, during and after chemo treatments.
And please do talk to your doctor about getting a Dexa Scan a very easy and simple test 20 minutes and all you got to do is lay still. You will find out how dense your bones are. All the women I've worked with that have had Chemo have lost bone mass and once the doctor was convince to do a Dexa scan, and seen the results they were all put on a specal medicine to help make their bones more dense, as well as to add more calicum to their diet and to do a lot more weight training. Even if it's been a few years since your treatments, if you think your bones have lost anything get the test done. It will tell you, and you can change your diet to fix it, and won't be such a high risk for osteoporosis. And you can monitor your progress by having another scan done in 1 to 2 years, and seeing your bones getting harder and harder.
For those who had radation:
1. Be very very careful with flexing exercises as well as with weight training. A lot of times radation will take the elastic from the skin, as well as the protective layer over your muscles. So if you build muscles it will actually snap the protective layer (fuscia) if you build too quickly. Or it will stretch the skin too fast leaving stretch marks.
Also a lot if times the skin that took the radation is just so thin it turns hard, so it doesn't stretch at all, you can actually tear your skin doing a chest press, just like someone cut you with a knife.
Some of this are extream cases who either had a lot of radation or just very senitive to it. But everyone loses a bit of elastic from the radation, it's just knowing how much. So improve slowly and really warm up, I'd seriously suggest a 10 minute warm up or better as the fuscia is like taffy, the warm it gets the more stretchy it gets.
On occasion I’ve gotten to personal train people who have and breast cancer and even some men are now getting this. I've ended up finding stuff out either by from the doctor or my own research and talking to the experts on the subject.
But congrats and way to go, you have won the battle and keep on going and fighting and make sure it doesn't come back with diet and exercise. But also make sure your geting the test you need done. As a lot of times doctors don't think your at risk of losing bone mass, if your under 40 when you have the Chemo done. Which isn't true, all the women I've trained who have had Chemo have all been under 25, and once convenced to get their doctor to do a Dexa Scan, were all put on a special medicine to help increase their bone density as it was low.
Kit