Women who have survived breast cancer and use aromatase inhibitors react surprisingly well to strength training. Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University discovered that the use of aromatase inhibitors can speed up the formation of new muscle mass in cancer survivors.
Women who survive breast cancer often pay a high price. Chemotherapy and years of treatment with anti-oestrogens destroy the cancer but reduce bone and muscle mass – to say nothing of other side effects. Breast cancer survivors often become less active and as a result put on weight. The researchers wanted to know whether strength training could help fight the side effects.
The researchers used a training programme that they had developed to help fight osteoporosis in healthy women. The women trained their legs with wall sits, squats, deadlifts, and forward and sideward lunges. In addition the women trained their upper bodies with exercise machines including the row, chest press, lateral raise and push up machines. The researchers combined the strength training with plyometrics and got the women to jump wearing a weighted vest.
A workout consisted of 6 sets of jumps, 10 reps each, 2 sets of exercises for the upper body and 3-4 sets of exercises for the lower body. The women trained twice a week.
A control group did stretching exercises twice a week. [FLEX]
After a year the researchers concluded that the strength training [POWER] had stopped bone tissue degeneration [BMD] in the vertebrae [Lumbar spine] and the hip [Total hip].
In the strength-training group the bone-free lean mass had increased by 1.38 percent. The increase for the stretch group was 1.12 percent. The difference between those groups was not statistically significant. But this picture changed when the researchers also looked at the use of aromatase inhibitors and put together the figure shown above. Then they noticed that women who used aromatase inhibitors and trained with weights did build up significantly more bone-free lean mass.
“In our study, we found greater between group differences in lean body mass over 1 year among aromatase inhibitor users that suggest a potentiating influence of aromatase inhibitors on training-induced hypertrophy”, the researchers write. “Recently, aromatase inhibitors use has been shown to increase free testosterone and lean mass in breast cancer survivors without concomitant changes in body fat. A possible synergistic effect of aromatase inhibitors and resistance training on lean mass in breast cancer survivors is an intriguing finding that is worth further study.”
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21424279