Longish post.
First, it’s been a blast watching Paris T&F. Congrats to Skinandbones for helping Grant podium. Loved the M1500! And, Rooks, wow, thanks for me waking up this morning with a smile on my face! Looking forward to the remaining finals!
Regarding us older male runners on this forum and elsewhere, many of us will age into prostate cancer. I did last year, my 4th different cancer - strange career grand slam. I’m posting a link to a recent prostate cancer and exercise study. The lead investigator, Lee Jones, PhD, is my quasi-mentor. He’s also partly funded by AKTIV Against Cancer, co-founded by the late, great, Greta Waitz. If you can’t access the PDF you can read the abstract and click on the “Interviews” tab to hear 19 minutes of him discussing the study. This study determined the exercise dose that they are now using in a Phase 2 clinical trial: ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT05751434
Surprisingly, this study is the first to investigate exercise as a dose similar to how drugs are dosed in clinical trials. Yep, it’s 2024 and no one had investigated exercise like this. Sad, but now you might understand my frustration with exercise research that I posted on here about 10 years ago.
These subjects averaged 93kgs in weight, had an average BMI of 29 (obese), and were inactive with some co-morbidities. As a lifelong exerciser, I can’t help but imagine what my prostate tissue might have shown, if anything, plus, I was very fit going into the prostatectomy surgery. However, my tissue was probably incinerated. But I bet there are other runners/endurance athletes with training diaries and/or wearables who are willing to donate their tissues to able investigators or to a tissue banks, and maybe leverage a small fundraiser to help pay for the costs and storage, if not some fitness sponsors i.e., Garmin, Adidas, Strava.
I have been down this road somewhat before when I hand carried my paraffin block of lymphoma tissue, slides, and images from Hong Kong where I was diagnosed with my first two lymphomas, but between two NCI Cancer centers, they lost my tissue, slides, and images. I also approached Komen's breast cancer tissue bank in Indianapolis and was successful in getting them to include a physical activity questionnaire (IPAQ-short form, self-administered) along with their donated tissue samples' histories. I'll inquire with Komen again for any suggestions they might have and I'll also try the Prostate Cancer Biorepository Network.