June 11, 2026
Toronto Star
By Iris Gorfinkel Contributor
Iris Gorfinkel is a family physician and clinical researcher in Toronto.
“I can’t take it any more. My knee is killing me and last night, I nearly fell.”
My normally stalwart patient — a 72-year-old grandmother — was in tears. She could have fractured her hip. She wasn’t a surgical candidate and had already sat on a wait-list for physio for six weeks.
I typically see three patients a day who require rehab. Most don’t want medications. They want to get better. What they need is supervised exercise but what I can prescribe is drugs. Without limit.
Physical activity
Decades of research have shown that regular physical activity eases depression and anxiety, improves sleep and restores a sense of control, but its impact on patients who already had cancer was less clear.
The benefits were made especially clear at Sunnybrook’s Odette Cancer Centre. Researchers enrolled nearly 900 patients with stage III or high-risk stage II colon cancer who’d completed surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy.
Half received health education materials alone; the other half was offered a supervised, structured exercise program. Eight years later, more patients in the supervised exercise group remained disease-free and they were less likely to die from their cancer.
Read more at thestar.com
