Ep 17: Sami Mansfield – Crossfit & cancer/ “cancer wellness for life” programs educating patients and clinical staff.

Sami Mansfield is a cancer exercise specialist and founder of Cancer Wellness for Life. She provides educational content about cancer wellness to clinical staff in hospitals and organizations, along with patients and survivors. Sami also runs “BUILD” a functional program run through a crossfit gym in Kansas, that is designed to combat treatment related side effects and improve the quality of life of cancer patients and survivors. In this episode, we chat about Sami’s programs, how she started collaborating with hospitals and what the BUILD program does for cancer patients and survivors.

Find out more about Sami at www.cancerwellnessforlife.com, @cancerwellnessforlife on Instagram and @bewellwithsami on twitter.

Keep up with us at reachbeyondcancer.com or follow me on twitter @ciaranfairman.

Sami Show notes

3:30 – Sami’s background & how she got started working with cancer patients and survivors.

6.00 – Cancer terminology is like learning a new language.

8.45 – How moving into survivorship can be a really challenging period.

10.00 – Challenges with research based exercise prescription & getting physician buy-in.

15.30 – Physical activity guidelines is not on physicians, it’s on exercise physiologists.

19.30 – What do we mean when we say strength training for cancer patients. The risk of inactivity by far outweighs the risks of exercises.  

25.00 – Improving the translation of research – moving beyond professionals talking to each other.

26.00 – Sami’s Cancer Wellness for Life program: what it is and what she does.

40.00 – 5 year survival rates have improved across a lot of cancer - but we care about quality of life, not just quantity.

44:00 – Sami’s BUILD program and working with cancer patients and survivors.

52.00 – The community aspect of BUILD and crossfit.

56.00 – People looking to join the BUILD program – what to expect.

61.00  Advice for professionals getting into the area.