Exercise Increases Natural Killer Cells and Immune Activity Against Cancer

In the 21st century, being active and staying in good shape has become a noble pursuit. Everybody wants to be healthy these days! Our daily schedule includes preparing superfoods, working out at the gym or outdoors, taking supplements, and getting state-of-the-art gadgets to measure our training performance and body metrics. We invest in anything and everything necessary to be in shape and be healthy.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated that: ‘physically active people have a lower risk of developing cancer like colon, lung, and breast than people who are not active’. Exercise is being increasingly prescribed to cancer patients to mitigate treatment-related side effects, as well as to improve quality of life and physical functioning. The cumulative effects of exercise may translate into both improved tumor control and enhanced treatment efficacy. Over the past 10 years, epidemiological studies have shown that exercise and physical activity are associated with markedly reduced cancer-related and overall mortality for major cancers such as breast, colon, and prostate cancers.

Natural Killer (NK) cells are a subset of cytotoxic lymphocytes with a ‘natural killing’ ability for cancer cells, and they are the first responders of the innate arm of the immune system. In healthy adult individuals, NK cells constitute 5–15% of all circulating lymphocytes. NK cells are able to recognize and eradicate tumor cells without prior antigenic exposure. NK cells develop in the bone marrow from CD34+ hematopoietic precursor cells and are subsequently distributed widely throughout the body, including the bone marrow (BM), lymph nodes (LNs), spleen, peripheral blood, lung, and liver. The most responsive immune cells to exercise are NK cells, and they show an acute mobilization into circulation during physical exertion. Upon stimulation, the main function of NK cells is to kill infected or transformed (malignant) cells and to trigger the adaptive immune response through cytokine release.

During exercise, the concentration of circulating immune cells increases due to the mobilization of immune cells. Studies indicate that exercise positively stimulates the immune system (neutrophils, monocytes, natural killer cells, T cells, and a number of cytokines) in healthy individuals, but the increase in natural killer (NK) cell frequency is more pronounced than the increase in T and B cells. The catecholamine level increase during moderate-to-high intensity exercise is thought to drive the mobilization of immune cells into the circulation. Muscle-derived exercise factors, known as myokines, can regulate NK cell proliferation maturation, and activation, showing that there is a muscle-to-immune cell crosstalk during exercise. When you have finished exercising, the induced levels of myokines are proposed to affect immune cell redistribution and activation.

Exercise is increasingly recognized as important to cancer care. Exercise results in improved vascularization and perfusion, resolution of hypoxia, and increased body temperature, and these factors contribute to a microenvironment that promotes NK cell responsiveness. Here at the Maharaj Institute, we can do an immune risk profile test and measure your NK cell count and activity so that you can monitor this and help keep cancer at bay.

Please contact the Maharaj Institute at 561-752-5522 or info@bmscti.org to see how they can help you measure and maintain your healthy immune system and bank your own stem cells and immune cells for future use.

Office 10301 Hagen Ranch Rd. Suite 600, Boynton Beach FL 33437

References:

1.Bigley AB, Simpson RJ. NK cells and exercise: implications for cancer immunotherapy and survivorship. Discov Med. 2015 Jun; 19(107):433-45. PMID: 26175401.

2.Manja Idorn and Pernille Hojman. Exercise-Dependent Regulation of NK Cells in Cancer Protection. Trends in Molecular Medicine, July 2016, Vol. 22, No. 7

3.Andrea Sitlinger, Danielle M. Brander, David B. Bartlett; Impact of exercise on the immune system and outcomes in hematologic malignancies. Blood Adv 2020; 4 (8): 1801–1811. doi: https://doi.org/10.1182/bloodadvances.2019001317