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Fighting and beating cancer is a tough battle to over come and for many, life is never the same. A group of Cochrane researchers have concluded that exercise may improve the quality of life for people with cancer. The researchers claim that activities such as walking and cycling can benefit those who are undergoing or have completed treatment for cancer.

Researchers reviewed 56 trials involving a total of 4,826 people undergoing treatment for different types of cancer, including breast and prostate cancer and 40 trials involving a total of 3,694 people who had completed treatment for cancer. 

Exercise programs in both reviews included walking, cycling, yoga, Qigong, resistance training and strength training. 

The results show that exercise can improve health-related quality of life for people with cancer. Further, results from both reviews show that exercise improved social functioning and tiredness. 

Benefits were also seen in the physical well-being of participants undergoing treatment and in self-esteem, emotional well-being, sexuality, sleep, anxiety and pain in people who had completed treatment.

Lead author Shiraz I. Mishra said while the results are encouraging, they must be taken with a grain of salt. 

"We need to treat these findings with caution because the trials we included looked at many different kinds of exercise programs, which varied by type of exercise, length of the program and how hard the participants had to exercise," Mishra said. "We need to understand from future trials how to maintain the positive impacts of exercise in the longer term and whether there are particular types of exercise that are suited to particular types of cancer."

According to the National Cancer Institute, it is estimated that 1,638,910 men and women will be diagnosed with and 577,190 men and women will die of cancer of all sites in 2012.

People with cancer suffer from many different physical, psychological and social effects related to cancer, as well as treatment-related symptoms. 

No previous systematic reviews have comprehensively examined the potential benefits of exercise on health-related quality of life, or on treatment-related symptoms. Cancer treatments and survival rates continue to improve, but quality of life remains a priority for people with cancer who are undergoing or have completed treatment.