Soraya Casla, oncology trainer: "When I said that patients had to do high-intensity training, they looked at me like I was crazy"

He neither accumulates hundreds of thousands of 'followers' on Instagram, nor is he pending uploading 'posts' in the most favorable time slots to burst it with 'likes'.

"Those of us who are working and researching are not publishing. My patients (and their oncologists) are my best prescribers because they are the best proof that what we do works and that fills us with satisfaction," says Soraya Casla, oncology trainer and creator of the

.

Discreet, "curranta" and exquisitely conscientious in everything she does, her name, however, came to the fore when one of her pupils, the presenter Ana Rosa Quintana, thanked her for the physical and mental push

her cancer recovery process. What does it mean to train with her?

"Ana Rosa was told about our team, Exercise and Cancer, through the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) and, after making an initial assessment, we started training. From the first moment, she took everything with great relativity and

.

He has never missed any of the planned sessions and, even if he was outside Madrid, he did them 'online'.

What's more, until the days when, perhaps, he felt worse, he would get up to walk 10 km.

Her perseverance has been key and

, because she is fully aware that, along with diet, physio or yoga, it is part of her treatment. ".

PhD in Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, specialized in exercise oncology, Soraya Casla completed her training in the United States, Canada, Denmark and Australia.

"The

is a very new field. The first studies that were carried out in cancer patients to verify its impact and what was the tolerance to physical activity are from the 80s. Already at that time, it was observed that the patients who stopped moving lost many physical and functional capacities," he says.

Today, no one can deny things as obvious as that "the

generated by practicing sports is a parameter that is directly related to the

, including metastatic patients".

This

that it induces, he continues, "although in principle it could be considered as something superficial, it has been shown that it directly affects the prognosis of the disease"- Also that "this decrease in fat, key in the prevention of

which harms the immune system so much, helps to better tolerate treatments; to have an active metabolism that causes nutrients to be correctly absorbed to promote tissue regeneration".

But there is even more: "It reduces the sensations of

that causes peripheral neuropathy, a very common side effect of different treatments that damages the nerves that are outside the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of

and can cause anything from pain to movement disorders", explains Casla.

However, he warns, to make the exercise bear fruit, not everything is worth it.

"There is no specific training in this and specialization is essential. It is known that not everything goes, that

that are related to exercise."

In this sense, he points out, there are two very important points to take into account: "You have to

. Obviously, there are not many of us and, unfortunately, there is no regulated training in this regard and, at In the end, the best letter of introduction is our curriculum. And we must be clear that

, because the intensity necessary to modify the biomarkers is not achieved"

And these two premises are, precisely, the pillars of the 'Exercise and Cancer' group: "We receive our patients at the premises we have at Plaza de Niños Jesús, 5 (Madrid) to carry out an initial assessment that allows us to personalize the

study their clinical history because, depending on the treatments they have received, they will have some side effects or others. We see what body composition they start from and based on all that, we compensate. We also do a cardiovascular capacity test, whose objective is know both the initial and metabolic level of your muscle mass.Why?Because

We see people with normal muscle mass who tire quickly because they are not producing energy well and others, on the other hand, with low muscle mass, like Eliud Kipchoge, but who is very efficient physiologically.

The idea is to understand the person globally, without focusing on parameters in isolation.

Based on that, we propose the exercises that they are going to do, both on their own and with us".

Casla remembers how, until recently, walking was almost the only physical activity recommended by oncologists in Spain.

"When I was in the United States in 2010, I discovered that, in the hospital programs, they made the patients run. When I returned, when I said that the patients had to do high intensity, the doctors looked at me as if I were crazy" .

It is, therefore, "to

that, in our case, we are modulating with strength and cardiovascular exercises. At least, there must be a total of

, distributed during the training session " .

In his program "we do not work those 20 minutes of high intensity in a row, but rather we add them with

, depending on the activity. For example, if we run we do series of 20 seconds, if they are strength, we still reach the minute. We vary".

The results cannot be better.

"One of my patients is a nurse. She used to run but had to stop when she was diagnosed with the disease. So, she started training with us, we gave her more strength sessions and she resumed running. They had told her not to exercise too much, but she is

.

and the doctors are so amazed with their evolution that they have contacted us because they did not expect it. What's more, they have told them that they had no idea that could do so much exercise which highlights the existence of environments in which the importance of all this still needs to be made visible".

The training sessions, although there is an 'indoor' part, "are mostly carried out in El Retiro because, in addition to the

, we must add those provided by

from a physical point of view but, above all, everything, mental, since depressive and anxiety symptoms improve, etc. And, of course, those who suppose

are part of a group that allows them to be very connected and this is very important for them.

. They talk about chemo or peripheral neuropathy and everyone understands them because they've been through it. It's all with us!"

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

• Add

• USA

• Australia

• Denmark

• Canada

• Ana Rosa Quintana Hortal

• instagram

• Oncology