One of the most common and difficult side effects of cancer treatment is extreme tiredness, also known as cancer-related fatigue.
This type of fatigue can feel much worse than normal tiredness.
It doesn’t always go away quickly—it can last for weeks, months, or even years after cancer treatment ends.
A group of researchers from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center and a start-up company called Arcascope have developed a new app to help people with cancer feel less tired.
The app gives personal advice based on each person’s body clock, also called the circadian rhythm. The study was published in Cell Reports Medicine.
Cancer treatments like chemotherapy and radiation can disturb the body’s internal clock, which helps control when we feel awake or sleepy.
This 24-hour cycle also affects other body functions like digestion and body temperature. When this natural rhythm is out of sync, people can feel even more tired.
There are already some ways to try to reduce cancer-related fatigue, such as taking medicine, doing regular exercise, or practicing meditation.
But these don’t work for everyone. “These measures appeal to only a portion of the population,” said Dr. Muneesh Tewari, a professor at the Rogel Cancer Center. “We wanted to provide something that could be more easily and widely accessible.”
One way to reset the body’s clock is through light. Sunlight or bright artificial light at the right time can help bring the circadian rhythm back into balance. Some past studies have tried using light therapy to help cancer patients, but they often used the same schedule for everyone, without thinking about each person’s unique body clock.
To create a more personalized approach, the team developed an app called Arcasync. This app tracks users’ heart rate and physical activity to figure out their daily sleep-wake pattern. Then, it gives specific suggestions like “Seek bright light” at certain times of day to help guide their internal rhythm back on track.
The researchers tested this app on 138 people with different types of cancer—breast cancer, prostate cancer, and blood cancers. The participants were randomly divided into two groups. Both groups tracked their fatigue, sleep problems, mood, and overall health over 12 weeks. However, only one group used the app and received personalized tips.
The results were encouraging. People who received advice from the app reported feeling less tired during the day and throughout the week. Their overall quality of life improved compared to the group that didn’t use the app.
“We’ve shown that you can use something that fits easily into your life to help guide your body’s clock,” said Dr. Sung Won Choi, a professor at the University of Michigan. He believes the app could help many people, no matter what type of cancer they have, and could be easier to use than medicine or exercise routines.
The researchers are now planning to expand the study and include more people. They also want to check how closely people followed the app’s light-related tips, which could help improve its effectiveness even more.
Dr. Olivia Walch, CEO of Arcascope and a key developer of the app, said the next step is to go beyond just reducing fatigue.
She hopes future versions of the app can help people take their medicine at the right time of day or prepare for chemotherapy infusions. The goal is to make treatments work better and lower the chance of side effects by aligning them with the body’s natural rhythms.
This study offers a promising new way to manage one of the most exhausting side effects of cancer treatment. Cancer-related fatigue is not only common but also deeply impacts daily life and emotional well-being.
Current methods like medication, meditation, or exercise may not be practical or effective for everyone. This new app-based approach is simple and personal. It uses data that can be gathered passively (like sleep and movement patterns) and turns it into easy-to-follow advice.
While the results are hopeful, this is just a first step. The app appears to reduce tiredness in people undergoing or recovering from cancer treatment, but more studies are needed to confirm how well it works in larger and more diverse groups.
It will also be important to see how many people actually follow the advice the app gives and whether that changes their results.
Still, this study shows how powerful our internal clocks can be—and how small, everyday actions like getting light at the right time may help people feel better during a very tough period of their lives.
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The research findings can be found in Cell Reports Medicine.
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