What is Cancer Rehabilitation After All?

Cancer rehabilitation is a new area of medicine important for all cancer at all Stages. Optimize outcomes and promote recovery.

Cancer Rehabilitation Explained.

I can only imagine the confusion back in the early 90’s when Steve Jobs said he was going to make a little rectangle the size of a granola bar that could hold thousands of songs. The only synonymous creation at that time would have been a walkman or discman, a rather bulky alternative which held 15-20 songs max. Now the concept of an i-pod is normalized and the term is universally recognized. Concepts in society evolve, then become mainstream. I hope cancer rehabilitation is like an i-pod, a necessity that becomes normalized and heavily valued…

The term ‘rehabilitation’ in medicine implies building physical capacity and function after a setback. Webster defines it as “a branch of medicine that aims to enhance and restore functional ability to those with physical impairments or disabilities”. In simple terms, rehab can involve any structure in the physical body such as bone, muscle, lung, the vestibular system, vision or the brain. These structures then impact any functional goal imaginable.

A cancer rehab plan is personalized to you.

Maybe the goal is to walk again, improve your balance, carry your kids, sleep better or maybe it’s to optimize your health before surgery/treatment. In my opinion much like the physical setbacks caused by severe injury and/or stroke, cancer too is a setback and it can effect many areas of one’s life. Hence a diagnosis of cancer and rehabilitation go hand in hand. A rehabilitation plan will optimize the cancer journey; the entire continuum of the journey!

Any physical setback or symptom has the potential to be well managed with a rehab plan. Symptom burden is a term for these setbacks, and can include chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathies, dizziness, hormone therapy side effects, fatigue, nausea amongst others. Many symptoms need a personalized rehab plan and can create barriers to accessing exercise as medicine. See below for the SAFE exercise guidelines, and feel free to read more about exercising safely with cancer here.

The cancer physio is attempting to clear all the mud and create a website for you where you can get rehab tools that work and evidence informed cancer rehab information. The term evidence informed is in the mandate because as a clinician I stand on the shoulders of giants before, so we can see just a bit better today than a decade past. I strongly appreciate the hard working and humble scientific community; I strive to share their knowledge in clinic.

At the cancer physio our goal is to optimize your cancer journey, be experts in our field and provide tools that work; it’s in the mandate. We hope to take you from any stage and any cancer to a rehab plan that is personalized to you. As cancer rehab is a new area in medicine, and there is a lot to navigate; we hope to do that for you as we tire ourselves with the research and changing science. We are mainly focused on physical rehabilitation but as the term rehabilitation can also include other clinical areas, we will include some resources in other health disciplines and always refer on when needed.

Please enjoy the cancer physio blog and research section filled with rehab tools and curated science both established and young!

As always, thank you for your interest in rehab tools and exercise as medicine

Kindly,

The Cancer Physio