According to brand new research that was reported on by Runner’s World and published in the Journal of Physiology, a single workout can already bring an instant effect on our health. With that, researchers studied the link between exercise, specifically High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) — any type of workout that combines burst of high-intensity effort with short periods of recovery — and cancer. Their findings: surprisingly, a single HIIT workout can impede the growth of human cancer cells.
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How? The researchers took male colon cancer survivors and split them up into 2 different groups. One group would undergo a single HIIT session and the other group would undergo regular HIIT sessions. Regardless of the group they’re in, the HIIT session(s) would usually consist the following: a 10-minute warmup followed by 4 rounds of cycling for 4 minutes each (with 3 minute rest periods in between each round). The first group did this exercise only once; the second group did this exercise 3 times a week for a month.
Then, blood samples were taken before and after each session.
Once gathered, they separated the red blood cells from the mix, leaving behind the blood’s “serum”. The researchers then replaced the serum of cancer cells that were grown in a lab with the serum from the participants in order to study how exercise affected cancer growth. Findings were mind-boggling! The serum gathered before exercise had no effect on the growth of the colon cancer cells. The serum gather after exercise, however, inhibited the growth of the colon cancer cells almost immediately.
That being said, a single HIIT session is enough to stop cancer cells in their tracks and can make a substantial and quantifiable difference in our health.
What are your thoughts on this? Would you now recommend HIIT?
