A researcher who is pioneering the study of the effect of exercise on cancer is Kerry Courneya at the U of Alberta. Here is a video of an extensive interview with him:

Around hour 1, minute 28, there is a discussion of the effect of cancer diagnosis and treatment on whether a patient would exercise:

"a cancer diagnosis and treatment has a very negative impact on exercise levels. All of these patients [ in his studies ] report doing dramatically less exercise during treatment than they were doing before diagnosis. After treatments, in survivorship, exercise will tend to increase back but not back to pre-diagnosis levels. It's like the diagnosis and treatment of cancers is kind of having a permanent negative impact on exercise levels”

He advocates that care teams emphasize how important exercise is to patients, and that more formal support be offered. He points to some positive signs:

"We're seeing a big growth in community- based exercise programs for cancer survivors. We have LiveStrong at the YMCA which is a program being rolled out across the US where you can go and work with an exercise specialist specifically working with cancer survivors."

He also pointed to a change evident in what some of the top flight NCI designated cancer centers in the US are doing:

"Many of any of these NCI designated Cancer Centers have fantastic exercise programs. MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. Dana Farber in Boston. A lot of the top Cancer Treatment Centers now have exercise specialists working right at the Cancer Treatment Center offering these programs to patients who are newly diagnosed. So there's a bunch of things that are going on to try and and help patients..."

I was treated at Fred Hutch, an NCI designated cancer center in Seattle. They don't have exercise specialists working to help their patients. When they sent me a survey to fill out after some of my treatments, I was totally positive about everything they were actually doing. It is a great place to be treated.

The survey had a section where you could write about anything they didn't specifically ask about. I quoted Courneya's statement about what their peers (and rivals) were doing.

I said those institutions are starting to respond to the evidence that is piling up about exercise - why not you? I encourage anyone reading this to let their treatment center know how they feel about this issue.