That thinking is changing. This year strong evidence emerged that exercise lengthens survival times and lowers recurrence risk for several cancer types. Such benefits are usually ascribed to medicine or surgery. But “exercise treats cancer as well as, if not better than, some of the current drugs that we’re offering our patients,” says Courneya, who led the first large randomized, controlled trial of the effects of workouts on cancer outcomes. It was published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine and involved more than 800 colon cancer patients. Participants with stage 3 and high-risk stage 2 cancer were assigned to a structured exercise program in addition to their oncology care. In a 10-year follow-up period, these people had a 28 percent lower risk of cancer recurrence, new cancers or death than similar patients who received only educational material about physical activity.