Boat Racing improves cancer survivability
04-01-2008, 05:53 PM
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Boat Racing improves cancer survivability
Friday, February 8, 2008
Boat racing improves cancer survivability
Okay, this should probably be filed in "news of the weird" or something, but research shows that,
The best long-term therapy for breast cancer survivors might have nothing to do with doctors or self-help books, a health researcher at McGill University says. Her prescription? Dragon boat racing.
Breast cancer survivors who participated in dragon boat racing reported significantly improved physical and mental health and coped better with post-recovery trauma, according to a study conducted by Dr. Catherine Sabiston of McGill's Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education.
The article explains why there was such a salutary effect for the women, but omits what I imagine would be another: competition gives purpose. Many of the cancer patients I have ministered to devote their entire energies and life to battling the cancer - a completely understandable thing, I should add. But focusing on the illness does not, in itself, improve health.
Boat racing, especially as part of a team, gives another focus that is social in nature. "The physical activity itself and the women the participants met acted as a sort of buffer to the enduring stresses of cancer recovery," said a researcher. "They started to live their lives like athletes. It was extremely empowering."
The article also makes me think of concentration-camp survivor Viktor Frankl's psychiatric theory of logotherapy, which is based on the axiom that the fundamental drive of a human being is to find purpose and meaning in life. No matter the outer circumstances, Frankl wrote, the people who remain mentally healthy (and thus more healthy physically) are the ones who maintain control of their inner life. He explained how this related to surviving Nazi concentration camps in his 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning, which has never gone out of print.
An example: Frankl pointed out that cigarettes in the camps were very hard to get and were almost never actually smoked. They were used as money. Guards and capos could be bribed with cigarettes. Bartering with other inmates was done with cigarettes. Frankl said that whenever he saw a prisoner actually smoking a cigarette, he knew that man would soon die. It was, Frankl wrote, the sign of a man who had given up all desire to live any more, who had shut the future out so completely that he saw no point in keeping cigarettes for barter any longer.
One of the deleterious effects cancer patient psychologically suffer is mentally to close off the future. A kind of fatalist determinism can set in easily. ISTM that what boat racing did for the breast-cancer patients was to give them a definite future: there is always another race coming up. The future is still real.
I shrink from claiming that any cancer patient can be helped by this or other, similar competitions. Some forms of cancer, as you well know, are so debilitating that this kind of athleticism is almost impossible. And if the cancer doesn't do it, the treatments often do. But the point, I think, is for those who care for them to help find ways that leave the future open and give the patient something definite to look forward to, even if it is only a short time away.
By Donald Sensing
Boat racing improves cancer survivability
Okay, this should probably be filed in "news of the weird" or something, but research shows that,
The best long-term therapy for breast cancer survivors might have nothing to do with doctors or self-help books, a health researcher at McGill University says. Her prescription? Dragon boat racing.
Breast cancer survivors who participated in dragon boat racing reported significantly improved physical and mental health and coped better with post-recovery trauma, according to a study conducted by Dr. Catherine Sabiston of McGill's Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education.
The article explains why there was such a salutary effect for the women, but omits what I imagine would be another: competition gives purpose. Many of the cancer patients I have ministered to devote their entire energies and life to battling the cancer - a completely understandable thing, I should add. But focusing on the illness does not, in itself, improve health.
Boat racing, especially as part of a team, gives another focus that is social in nature. "The physical activity itself and the women the participants met acted as a sort of buffer to the enduring stresses of cancer recovery," said a researcher. "They started to live their lives like athletes. It was extremely empowering."
The article also makes me think of concentration-camp survivor Viktor Frankl's psychiatric theory of logotherapy, which is based on the axiom that the fundamental drive of a human being is to find purpose and meaning in life. No matter the outer circumstances, Frankl wrote, the people who remain mentally healthy (and thus more healthy physically) are the ones who maintain control of their inner life. He explained how this related to surviving Nazi concentration camps in his 1946 book, Man's Search for Meaning, which has never gone out of print.
An example: Frankl pointed out that cigarettes in the camps were very hard to get and were almost never actually smoked. They were used as money. Guards and capos could be bribed with cigarettes. Bartering with other inmates was done with cigarettes. Frankl said that whenever he saw a prisoner actually smoking a cigarette, he knew that man would soon die. It was, Frankl wrote, the sign of a man who had given up all desire to live any more, who had shut the future out so completely that he saw no point in keeping cigarettes for barter any longer.
One of the deleterious effects cancer patient psychologically suffer is mentally to close off the future. A kind of fatalist determinism can set in easily. ISTM that what boat racing did for the breast-cancer patients was to give them a definite future: there is always another race coming up. The future is still real.
I shrink from claiming that any cancer patient can be helped by this or other, similar competitions. Some forms of cancer, as you well know, are so debilitating that this kind of athleticism is almost impossible. And if the cancer doesn't do it, the treatments often do. But the point, I think, is for those who care for them to help find ways that leave the future open and give the patient something definite to look forward to, even if it is only a short time away.
By Donald Sensing
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