Cancer: staying active and connected through treatment

Step by step

1. 1

   Step 1: Ask your team what is right for you

   This is the first step because it has to be. What is safe depends entirely on your treatment, your blood counts, any surgery and your own recovery, and only your oncology team can tell you. Ask them specifically what movement they recommend and what to avoid. Everything below assumes you have had that conversation.

   Learn more: Muscle strength and ageing
2. 2

   Step 2: Move gently, even when tired

   The instinct during treatment is to rest completely, and complete rest tends to deepen fatigue rather than relieve it. Gentle activity, within what your team has agreed, usually helps energy, appetite, sleep and mood. Little and often, stopping well before exhaustion, and nothing on the days your body says no.

   Learn more: Movement as a community habit
3. 3

   Step 3: Hold on to muscle where you can

   Treatment and inactivity both cost muscle, and muscle is what carries you through recovery and back into ordinary life. Gentle, light resistance work, if your team agrees it is safe, protects more than strength: it protects independence. After surgery involving the arm or chest, follow the specific exercises your physiotherapist gives you rather than general advice.

   Learn more: Chair dance for bone and muscle
4. 4

   Step 4: Do not disappear from company

   People often withdraw during treatment, from tiredness, from appearance, from not wanting to be the ill one in the room. Company helps, and a group where nothing is expected of you is easier than seeing people one at a time. Turning up occasionally and sitting out most of it is entirely fine.

   Learn more: Meaning and belonging in healthy ageing
5. 5

   Step 5: Look after mood and sleep too

   Anxiety, low mood and broken sleep are common alongside treatment and are worth raising rather than enduring, both with your team and with your own doctor. Ask what support is available: many cancer services have counselling and support groups, and using them is sensible rather than self-indulgent. Nothing on this page is medical advice or guidance on treatment.

   Learn more: Sleep & recovery

All topics in this guide

• Muscle strength and ageing
• Movement as a community habit
• Chair dance for bone and muscle
• Meaning and belonging in healthy ageing
• Sleep & recovery

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