Another way to look at it is this is that CrossFit makes you better at life. Few people will argue this. That is a very real, functional application of strength and conditioning training.

But for Kristin Guerra, functional fitness means that CrossFit has allowed her to become an embodiment of the strength needed to fight cancer, both on her own behalf and that of others for whom she advocates.

CrossFit has given Kristin Guerra the strength to fight cancer.

Kristin’s Diagnosis

At 26 years old, Kristin was living a storybook life. She was six months away from her dream wedding, engaged to a wonderful man, had a great job, and was looking forward to starting the life she’d always envisioned.

Then she received a jarring diagnosis – stage two Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A routine checkup to treat some neck pain led to additional tests, which lead to PET scans, and then the diagnosis.

“With her wedding just months away, Kristin began a fairly aggressive course of chemotherapy that would end only weeks before her wedding day, leaving her weak and without hair. But nothing, she had decided, was going to keep her from celebrating her wedding.”

“The doctor found a lump in the front right side of my neck,” she said. “He started asking a bunch of questions. Was I sick, did I have a fever, was I tired? The answer was no, no, no.” With her wedding just months away, Kristin began a fairly aggressive course of chemotherapy that would end only weeks before her wedding day, leaving her weak and without hair. But nothing, she had decided, was going to keep her from celebrating her wedding. “If you look at any of my wedding pictures, the hair is fake – it’s a wig.”

Kristin’s aggressive cancer treatment ended only weeks before her wedding day.

The treatment outcome, thankfully, was excellent. The chemo and radiation were successful and Kristin received an “all clear” that the cancer was gone. With that, she emerged with a new resolve to be an advocate, for herself, her family, and for others.

Finding CrossFit

Enter CrossFit. It wasn’t long after Kristin returned to full health that she found CrossFit and took yet another step in building the wall between herself and cancer. She had always exercised, but in the common, pre-CrossFit, globo-gym style. “I was always going back and forth to the gym and working out, getting bored, stopping, the whole cycle,” she said.

“‘I knew that once I got into it and started to learn more about nutrition and the right foods to eat that CrossFit offered me so much more than just a workout.”’

With CrossFit, she found a lifestyle that lead her to strength, nutritional education, and most of all, community. She approaches the nutritional aspect as another means of warding off any recurrence of cancer and of protecting her family. “I’ve learned so much about Roundup and GMOs. And I knew that once I got into it and started to learn more about nutrition and the right foods to eat that CrossFit offered me so much more than just a workout.”

Kristin is campaigning for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Man & Woman of the Year.

But most importantly, Kristin has found the community that has built up around her at NewCov CrossFit in Newport, Kentucky offers her a perfect platform from which to fight cancer, as an advocate and as a survivor. For example, she has accepted the challenge to campaign for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Man & Woman of the Year, a monumental task that requires the nominee to raise a minimum of $15,000 for blood cancer research. In true CrossFitter fashion, Kristin instead set her goal at $50,000.

Among her rather innovative fundraising ideas – an online CrossFit competition called Battle of the Boxes where one of the scores comes from that box’s fundraising efforts. The genius of marrying CrossFit’s naturally competitive nature with fundraising for cancer research is one of the reasons Kristin will, without a doubt, hit her goal.

A Brick in the Wall

CrossFit not only keeps Kristin strong, but, she believes, it serves as another brick in the wall between her and any concerns of recurrence. “I’ve had to come to realize that CrossFit’s role in my life is to make me awesome at all the other things. Being awesome at my job, being an awesome wife, being an awesome mom. It keeps me healthy, so it keeps the cancer away.”

The nexus between CrossFit and the fighting spirit is a strong one. The worldwide community has lost a number of way-too-young athletes – from Amanda Miller, after whom the workout “Amanda” is named, to Brittany Gill, to Jason Fine. Two common themes have prevailed: one, the support of the respective communities was enormous, and two, each of those named fought fiercely.

“’I’ve had to come to realize that CrossFit’s role in my life is to make me awesome at all the other things. Being awesome at my job, being an awesome wife, being an awesome mom. It keeps me healthy, so it keeps the cancer away.'”

There is a lot that is learned about pushing through, fighting, and the mental toughness required in the throes of battle during training with our community. A look at Amanda’s blog, Jason’s blog, and the comments on Brittany’s image will bear that out. These are the stories that push Kristin, as a survivor, to fight even harder for research and a cure.

If you’d like to put a team together for Battle of the Boxes, click here. To donate directly to Kristin’s campaign (100% of proceeds go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society) click here.

More Like This:

• The Strength to Survive: Cancer’s Nothin’ – I Do CrossFit
• 8 Stories of Finding Strength Through Sport
• “Thank You CrossFit. You Saved My Life!”
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photo 1 courtesy of Brian Miller.

Photos 2 and 4 courtesy of Kristin Guerra.

Photo 3 courtesy of Erin Ashley Photography.

The post Real Functional Fitness: CrossFit and the Battle Against Cancer appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Is there anything men can do to reduce their risk of developing the disease? More importantly, is there anything men who get diagnosed with prostate cancer can do to improve their chances of survival? It might be as simple as looking at what we’re eating as there’s a fair amount of evidence associating two popular foods with prostate cancer progression and growth.

Chicken and Prostate Cancer

A report in 2010 out of Harvard University, the Cancer of the Prostate Strategic Urologic Research Endeavor, showed men with prostate cancer who consumed a large amount of chicken quadrupled the chance of their disease progressing.¹

What’s the explanation for this?

The scientists thought it might be the high levels of heterocyclic amines, carcinogens that build up when meat is cooked at a high temperature, which are present more in poultry than in other meats. Another explanation could come from the fact the researchers noticed the cancer developed far more quickly in those men who ate chicken with skin on as opposed to those who ate their chicken without skin. So according to this study, men with prostate cancer could eat skinless chicken breast (if they were to eat chicken) and not increase the risk of progression. Granted, this is only one study and there will need to be a lot more follow-up work to determine how significant these findings were, but it’s still cause for some concern.

Eggs and Prostate Cancer

The same Harvard study observed that men with prostate cancer who averaged just under an egg per day had a two-fold increased risk of prostate cancer progression compared to men who didn’t eat eggs. What’s more, these findings were supported by a follow-up study in 2011, which determined that even healthy men may be at an increased risk of developing a lethal form of prostate cancer by eating over 2.5 eggs per week compared with men who don’t eat eggs.²

What could possibly be the explanation for this?

Some researchers and doctors think it may be the high levels of choline present in eggs. A study in 2012, also out of Harvard University, determined that among a group of 47,896 men, those with the highest levels of choline intake had a 70% increased risk for getting lethal prostate cancer.³ But choline is good for you, right? Absolutely, and we do need to include choline as part of our diets. But what these researchers found is that it’s not the choline intake necessarily, but the trimethylamine oxide (TMAO) that choline is converted to (first to trymethylamine by gut bacteria and then to TMAO in our liver) that could increase inflammation and promote cancer progression along with cardiovascular risk.⁴

Gut bacteria also produce this same toxic chemical when they metabolize L-carnitine in red meat as discovered in a landmark study from the Cleveland Clinic published this past May.⁵ What’s most interesting about their findings is they discovered that in contrast to the omnivorous human subjects studied, those consuming a plant-based diet produced a negligible amount of TMAO even when consuming L-carnitine. So what does this mean and what are the possible implications with regards to choline intake? Since the intestinal microbiota of those consuming a predominantly plant-based diet are different from omnivores, and since plant-based eaters don’t convert L-carnitine into TMAO as much as omnivores, could the same thing be true for choline? It’s possible, but again, we’re going to need to see more studies to confirm this theory. It’s worth noting that there are plenty of excellent plant-based sources of choline, including broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens, and other cruciferous vegetables.

So, Do We Eat Poultry or Not?

While these studies aren’t entirely conclusive and will require extensive follow up, which is likely to happen, they are certainly cause for concern. We could always choose to ignore them, but if we decide to be prudent we may want to reduce our consumption of eggs and chicken skin, at the very least, or avoid them altogether. We can also include foods in our diet that have been shown to be protective against prostate cancer growth, including flax seeds^6,7, cruciferous vegetables⁸, other plant foods high in lignans and isoflavones, and maybe even soybeans (non-GMO of course).⁹ Additionally, we now know that exercise can greatly increase your chances of survival as well. So men, if you’re going to keep eating chicken and eggs, stay active, eat lots of nutrient-dense plants and seeds, avoid chicken skin, and hope these studies on poultry turn out to be false.

References:

1. Richman EL, Stampfer MJ, Paciorek A, Broering JM, Carroll PR, Chan JM. 2010. “Intakes of meat, fish, poultry, and eggs and risk of prostate cancer progression.” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. March.

2. Richman EL, Kenfield SA, Stampfer MJ, Giovannucci EL, Chan JM. 2011. “Egg, red meat, and poultry intake and risk of lethal prostate cancer in the prostate-specific antigen-era: incidence and survival.” Cancer Prevention Research. December.

3. Richman EL, Kenfield SA, Stampfer MJ, Giovannucci EL, Zeisel SH, Willett WC, Chan JM. 2012. “Choline intake and risk of lethal prostate cancer: incidence and survival.” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. October.

4. Tang WH, Wang Z, Levison BS, Koeth RA, Britt EB, Fu X, Wu Y, Hazen SL. 2013. “Intestinal microbial metabolism of phosphatidylcholine and cardiovastcular risk.” The New England Journal of Medicine. April.

5. Koeth RA, Wang Z, Levison BS, Buffa JA, Org E, Sheehy BT, Britt EB, Fu X, Wu Y, Li L, Smith JD, DiDonato JA, Chen J, Li H, Wu GD, Lewis JD, Warrier M, Brown JM, Krauss RM, Tang WH, Bushman FD, Lusis AJ, Hazen SL. 2013. “Intestinal microbiota metabolism of L-carnitine, a nutrient in red meat, promotes atherosclerosis.” Nature Medicine. May.

6. Demark-Wahnefried W, Robertston CN, Walther PJ, Polascik TJ, Paulson DF, Vollmer RT. 2004. “Pilot study to explore effects of low-fat, flaxseed-supplemented diet on proliferation of benign prostatic epithelium and prostate-specific antigen.” Urology. May.

7. Demark-Wahnefried W, Price DT, Polascik TJ, Robertson CN, Anderson EE, Paulson DF, Walther PJ, Gannon M, Vollmer RT. 2001. “Pilot study of dietary fat restriction and flaxseed supplementation in men with prostate cancer before surgery: exploring the effects on hormonal levels, prostate-specific antigen, and histopathologic features.” Urology. July.

8. Hayes JD, Kelleher MO, Eggleston IM. 2008. “The cancer chemopreventive actions of phytochemicals derived from glucosinolates.” European Journal of Nutrition. May.

9. Morton MS, Chan PS, Cheng C, Blacklock N, Matos-Ferreira A, Abranches-Monteiro L, Correia R, Lloyd S, Griffiths K. 1997. “Lignans and isoflavonoids in plasma and prostatic fluid in men: samples from Portugal, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom.” The Prostate. July.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Is There A Connection Between Poultry and Prostate Cancer? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I love my CrossFit Murdock family. I seriously know that the strength and endurance I achieved from the six solid months I was going there saved my life through this journey also known as breast cancer. I know that without my CrossFit family my recovery would be so much slower.

On July 26, 2013 I got a call I was already prepared for: “Mrs. Stoppiello, You have breast cancer. Please come into the office right away.” I called my husband and we met at the doctor’s office. As the doctor explained my diagnosis, I listened intently as my husband cried next to me. Double mastectomy was going to be my treatment. Not something you really want to hear at the age of 32. I am a woman. My breasts are a part of that label. I came to immediate grips with the seriousness of this journey and the fact that going on and living meant the boobs had to go.

Every doctor who met me was in awe of my positive attitude and my healthy organic life style. I had no family history. I am a massage therapist, an avid CrossFitter, a mom, and a wife. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke. I look forward to my deadlifts and box jumps. Cancer was not in my life’s plan.

Telling the people around me was the hardest. I found myself comforting them, instead of them comforting me. My mental state was and is beyond healthy. People around me, including my trainers, treated me differently, though. But I was living with cancer, not dying from it. I pushed through every one of my workouts up until two days of my surgery. The last workout, I literally cried about having to miss what was max lift day. I wanted so badly to know my three-rep max so when I got back I could compare my strength, but the doctor said no “extreme” lifting before surgery for fear of muscle spasms. I was not happy. There is just something so amazing about CrossFit.

That first day you walk into your CrossFit box, it’s scary. You smell the sweat and everyone around you looks so athletic. You doubt your ability to dive headfirst into some incredible workouts. After about three months I stopped looking up the workout ahead of time, for fear I would be up all night stressing about my proper body mechanics on wall balls in the 6:00am workout.

I became stronger at work, being able to work on more massage clients and not getting tired after three appointments. I began to feel proud of my accomplishments. “I can’t” never came out of my mouth. I always pushed through every workout. Then, this stupid speed bump called cancer came in and tried to take over all those accomplishments. Well, I dug deep, just like I had through those insane workouts, and I pushed through.

I am now only six weeks out from my double mastectomy. My doctors continue to be amazed at my quick recovery. I am constantly hearing from people, “You look great!” or, “You just had a major cancer surgery?” They ask, “How are you getting better so soon?”

I can remember in the hospital, I got up to go to the restroom and the nurse offered me a portable toilet. I told her, “Hell no I’m going to the bathroom.” I used all my bodies’ strength and walked. She was so surprised and made a comment about how she couldn’t believe I got up. As she guided me with my IV trailing closely behind, I turned around and said, “I CrossFit.”

With the blessing of her encouraging nod of “You go girl,” I did my thang and returned to bed with little assistance. See, when you tell someone you CrossFit, they immediately recognize the hard work you put into your exercise regimen. It takes discipline and drive. It takes fighting through “I can’t” and coming out stronger. It takes pushing yourself to do better.

I love CrossFit. I use my warm-up as my exercise to regain my range of motion that I almost completely lost in my shoulders, as reconstruction happens underneath your pec major and minor muscles. I went from not being able to feed or bathe myself to now being completely independent in almost everything in six weeks. I have drive and determination that I know came from the discipline I gained doing CrossFit. I am not back to my box or my work yet, but I am close. I will have three more surgeries and I plan on succeeding through all of them with the same drive.

Never take your health for granted. You never know when you will need your strength to survive.

The post The Strength to Survive: Cancer’s Nothin’ – I Do CrossFit appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It’s no surprise that exercise is theorized to exacerbate cancer. Hormones associated with tissue growth, like growth hormone, IGF-1, insulin, and leptin, have been shown to be associated with higher cancer risk and the progression of existing cancer. In a recent study in PLoS ONE, researchers examined the interplay between exercise, hormones, and prostate cancer, which has been one of the most discussed types of cancer in recent literature.

The researchers noted that long-term exercise was associated with reduced risk of cancer. These effects are related in part to the long-term hormonal response to exercise. Much like your heart rate response to cardiovascular exercise, over time your circulating hormones tend to decrease in response to exercise. In the long term, you’ll have less of these hormones in total. If you’re an avid exerciser, your overall hormone state is more inhospitable to prostate cancer, so your risk goes down.

However, the researchers in this study were more interested in the effects of acute exercise on hormones, rather than long-term exercise. The acute effects of exercise are quite different from the long-term effects. That is to say, when we exercise, the hormones supporting tissue growth come out in full force. For an athlete, the increase in hormones is usually a good thing, since it signals the repair and growth of damaged muscles. But for cancer cells this means growth too, and that’s a bad thing.

The researchers didn’t just expose cancer cells to these hormones, because they already knew what would happen in isolation: the cells would grow. Instead, they took blood from individuals at rest and those who had just exercised and exposed the cancer cells to the blood serum samples. This means they exposed the cancer cells to a much broader range of blood contents than just a few isolated hormones. They effectively exposed them to the state of the body post-exercise.

The results of the study were eye-opening. The serum of nine out of ten participants who had exercised actually inhibited cancer growth. Despite the increase in tissue-growing hormones, the cancer’s growth was slowed. When pooling the samples, the exercise serum resulted in a 31% inhibition to the growth of cancer. When injected into mice, the serum caused a delay in tumor formation.

Although some of the more potent hormonal outcomes of exercise, like growth hormone and IGF-1, may support cancer growth in isolation, this study shows they don’t have the same effect when considered as a part of the whole post-exercise state. As it turns out, even acute exercise seems to be beneficial, at least at slowing the rate of existing cancer. The researchers concluded that this study dissuades fear of the effects of exercise on prostate cancer.

References:

1. Helene Rundqvist, et. al., “Effect of Acute Exercise on Prostate Cancer Cell Growth,” PLoS ONE 8(7), 2013.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Exercise Reduces Growth of Prostate Cancer appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The yoga classes we took were with a few different instructors. The first class, with Margaret, was a good intro class to start off the retreat. The next time we met up we were practicing for three hours! The next day we had a couple different classes and were split up into two groups, either doing yoga or with the horses. I ended up with Lisa who taught a very challenging class, which was restorative at the same time. The classes were not designed specifically for cancer survivors, but the teachers offered modifications and reminded us to go at our own pace.

Many of the survivors seemed to be fairly knowledgeable with yoga already. The staff was aware of our abilities since we completed a questionnaire prior to arrival regarding any injuries or limitations. One of the survivors was still recovering from shoulder surgery, but as a yoga teacher she knew how to modify. I would say that meditation, restorative poses (like supine baddha konasana), and forward folds were the most rewarding for the group. These practices are great for quieting the mind, as well as relaxing and calming the nerves. I often hear from other survivors that this can be one of the most beneficial aspects of yoga.

The yoga classes incorporated some poses specific to riding horses, including heart and hip openers such as horse and camel. The heart openers were to connect to the horse and the hip openers were to prepare for riding. When we were introduced to the horses, we were given very thorough instruction to be able to groom, care, and connect with our horses. We weren’t allowed to just blindly jump on the horse and start riding. We were taught that horses are like prey and we must approach them with care and ease. Working with the horses was a very mindful practice, similar to yoga. We were even introduced to a horse named Oz diagnosed with cancer. Ironically, he was awaiting our arrival in the pen.

We did learn to do some breathing and get correct alignment on the horse, even though it’s not exactly doing yoga. But yoga is all about the breath and alignment is a huge part of yoga poses. You could call it yoga on the horse, but it’s not the yoga that comes to mind. It’s cowgirl plus yoga. It’s yeehaw and Namaste. It’s fully committed and ready to go, but honoring yourself and your relationship with your horse.

The biggest gift that we all took away from this retreat was making what I believe will be lifelong connections with other breast cancer survivors. I felt like I had known these women my whole life and was sad to leave. We are already planning our reunion in other destinations, so you can imagine how much this trip meant to all of us. As survivors we have all been through so much personally, but the depth of gratitude we felt was beyond words. So, yeehaw and Namaste!

Photos courtesy of Larry Stanley Photography.

The post Yeehaw and Namaste: Cowgirl Yoga for Breast Cancer Survivors appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The study was a part of a series of investigations that looked at exercise habits among cancer patients. The researchers in the study discovered patients who regularly participated in exercise before they were diagnosed were more likely to exercise than those who had not done so previously. Daily activities such as gardening were considered to be sufficient exercise. Researchers also discovered patients took exercise advice much more seriously when it was directly advised from their oncologist. However, none of the oncologists who were studied had given exercise advice to their patients.¹

“As doctors, we often tell patients that exercise is important, but to this point, nobody had studied what patients know about exercise, how they feel about it and what tends to get in the way,” says lead author Andrea Cheville, M.D., of Mayo Clinic’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.²

“There was a real sense of ‘What I do every day, that’s my exercise,'” says Dr. Cheville, noting most patients didn’t realize daily activities tend to require minimal effort. “Most were not aware that inactivity can contribute to weakening of the body and greater vulnerability to problems, including symptoms of cancer…Generally, patients are not being given concrete advice about exercise to help them maintain functionality and to improve their outcomes,” Dr. Cheville says.³

Exercise provides many benefits to cancer patients. It can improve a patient’s mobility, and as a result he or she can become more active and enjoy activities outside the home, rather than being isolated indoors. Exercise can also improve overall feelings of strength and physical safety, ease fatigue often associated with cancer, and improve sleep quality.⁴

The researchers from this study plan to find a way to effectively convey the message about exercise’s benefits to cancer patients, and how it can provide some symptom relief and even enhance recovery. This is good news considering many cancer patients experience limitations in what they can do and anything that can naturally help improve their quality of life is beneficial.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Exercise Improves Recovery From Cancer appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

A recent analysis conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill revealed that either mild or intense exercise before or after menopause may reduce breast cancer risk. However, significant weight gain may negate the possibility of prevention. This study was published in Cancer, which is a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.²

The recent study conducted at UNC included 1,504 women who had breast cancer (233 noninvasive and 1,271 invasive) and 1,555 women without breast cancer. The ages of the women ranged from 20 to 98 years old. This study was part of the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project, which is an investigation of possible environmental causes of breast cancer.³

The results of the study indicated that the women who exercised, regardless of the phase of life they were in, had a reduced risk of developing breast cancer. Those who exercised 10 to 19 hours per week benefited the most, and saw about a 30% reduced risk in developing cancer.⁴

Lauren McCullough, who led the study and is a doctoral candidate at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health, stated, “The observation of a reduced risk of breast cancer for women who engaged in exercise after menopause is particularly encouraging given the late age of onset for breast cancer.”⁵

Even though it was discovered exercise reduces the risk of breast cancer, the extent and duration of the exercise required to reap these benefits is still not known. It is also unknown whether or not women with certain body types experience a reduced risk when they exercise, and if exercise reduces the risk of all types of breast cancer.⁶

Additionally, the results of the study indicated women who were active yet experienced a significant amount of weight gain, especially after menopause, had an increased risk of developing breast cancer. This indicates that the cancer-reducing risk benefits of exercise are nullified if a healthy weight maintenance protocol is not followed.⁷

The post Exercise Reduces Risk of Breast Cancer appeared first on Breaking Muscle.