Exercise may reduce, and even reverse, bone loss caused by hormone and radiation therapies used to treat localized prostate cancer, thereby decreasing the potential risk of bone fractures and improving men’s quality of life, researchers say.

“Prostate cancer patients are not routinely advised to exercise. Walking is one tool that prostate cancer patients can use to improve their health and minimize the side effects of cancer and cancer treatments,” says Paula Chiplis, a registered nurse at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital, who led a study on the effects of exercise on men with the disease. “Walking has no harmful side effects, if done moderately, but it can dramatically improve life for men suffering from side effects from some prostate cancer treatments.”

“Localized” prostate cancer, which means the tumor is confined to the gland, allows men to chose surgery, external or internal radiation, or hormone therapy as treatment options.  Those men who receive radiation therapy often undergo months of hormone therapy to decreases testosterone and estrogen that feed the cancer cells, thereby keeping the tumor from growing.

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Every time I see that advertisement on TV for a drug aimed at shrinking a man’s prostate from enlargement, I notice the warning, “Only your doctor can tell if you have prostate cancer.”

Unfortunately for men over 50, when the prostate gets a wild hair and starts acting up, misery is the usual byproduct. My cousin, J.W., was in such terrible pain from an enlarged prostate that he literally cursed the day he was born.

Some urologists—those medical doctors trained to handle diseases “down there”—believe that some men’s prostates begin growing when they’re in their 30s or 40s, but more than half of the men over 50 have some enlargement.

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