Walking is good exercise. To reach and maintain physical fitness, it is necessary to walk 5 km in less than 45 minutes five times a week. The same result is obtained by running 2% km in less than 12 minutes four times a week.
If this is too fast for the middle-aged man or woman, run 3 km in less than 20 minutes, four times a week.
If you prefer to ride a bicycle, you should ride 8 kms in 20 minutes, six times a week.
Swimming is an excellent way of exercising your heart and lungs. Try 750 metres in 20 minutes, five times a week.
If you are competitive and wish to play squash, IV2 hours squash at least three times a week is necessary to maintain fitness.
If you exercise only twice a week, you cannot hope to get fit or maintain fitness. If you exercise only once a week, this is more dangerous to your heart than no exercise at all.
Exercise burns up energy and will slowly burn up excess weight. It may take a long time to burn off those extra kilos of fat but, combined with a proper diet, it can trim you down to an ideal weight.
*350/71/1*
Most doctors believe immediate operation following positive biopsy gives better results than closing the wound and operating again later. Psychologically it may be distressing to a woman to face a second operation.
There has been little improvement in the results of treatment of this condition over the last 30 years, despite enormous advances in treatment of other forms of cancer.
Operation remains the treatment of choice. In the past the operation was a radical mastectomy. This removed the affected breast, a large portion of overlying skin, the underlying muscles of the chest wall and the lymph glands under the arms.
The result is disfiguring and makes it hard to fit a prosthesis (breast substitute) under the clothes.
Despite arguments to the contrary suggesting lesser procedures, removal of the breast and the lymph glands is necessary. It is no longer considered necessary to remove the muscles of the chest wall.
Simple mastectomy (removal of the breast alone followed by radiation treatment to the glands under the arm) is advocated by some as an alternative.
Removal of the lump only, the so called lumpectomy, so as to leave a woman with her breast has, in my opinion, no part to play in the proper management of cancer of the breast. The risk of local recurrence is so high, about 60 per cent, that it is not justified.
Apart from operation there is often need for radiation treatment either in the initial treatment of breast cancer or in treatment of recurrences or spread of the tumor.
*100/71/1*
Some practitioners are simply unable to tell their patients that control of their cancer is beyond the practitioner’s power. To advise not having, or stopping, anti-cancer treatment would be to admit that this is so. Thus these practitioners keep on recommending highly potent and unpleasant treatments when they are either known to be extremely unlikely to do any good or are experimental. Or course, these practitioners justify their actions to themselves, their colleagues and the patient’s relatives. When questioned they say: ‘I can’t tell that patient that I can do nothing because that would be cruel — it would take all hope away.’ This sort of statement actually confirms my claim that these practitioners are solely concerned with fighting cancer, not with treating whole people. When there is no effective anti-cancer treatment available, they say they can do nothing. When there is no hope of curing the cancer they say that stopping treatment would take all hope away. Practitioners who care for whole people would never think or say that they can do nothing. They know that treating symptoms, giving time, care, reassurance and a sympathetic ear are all doing something! Practitioners who care for whole people know that cure of their cancer is not the only thing that patients hope for. They recognise and try to fulfill other hopes—hopes for relief of pain, for time to spend at home with family and loved ones, for realistic information that will allow time for goodbyes and grieving.
*130/40/1*
