Exercise is generally good for you, but a new high-quality clinical trial finds that it's so good, it can even knock back colon cancer—and, in fact, rival some chemotherapy treatments.

The finding comes from a phase 3, randomized clinical trial led by researchers in Canada, who studied nearly 900 people who had undergone surgery and chemotherapy for colon cancer. After those treatments, patients were evenly split into groups that either bulked up their regular exercise routines in a three-year program that included coaching and supervision or were simply given health education. The researchers found that the exercise group had a 28 percent lower risk of their colon cancer recurring, new cancers developing, or dying over eight years compared with the health education group.

The benefits of exercise, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, became visible after just one year and increased over time, the researchers found. The rate of people who survived for five years and remained cancer-free was 80.3 percent among the exercise group. That's a 6.4 percentage-point survival boost over the education group, which had a 73.9 percent cancer-free survival rate. The overall survival rate (with or without cancer) during the study's eight-year follow-up was 90.3 percent in the exercise group compared with 83.2 percent in the education group—a 7.1 percentage point difference. Exercise reduced the relative risk of death by 37 percent (41 people died in the exercise group compared with 66 in the education group).

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• Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet recently made their red carpet debut as a couple.
• They have reportedly been dating for about two years, but some fans still think it's an odd pairing.
• PR experts told BI creating an air of mystery or even confusion works to the couple's advantage.

Despite nearly two years of sightings, smooches, and soft launches, Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet's relationship still feels like a glitch in the Hollywood matrix.

Even when the couple made their long-awaited red carpet debut last week after several PDA-filled public outings, some still struggled to accept the news.

"I still can't believe kylie & timothee is a real thing," one person wrote on X.

Jenner and Chalamet's relationship has been defined by skepticism since rumors of their pairing first surfaced in 2023. Social media users wondered what these two stars — one who rose to fame on a gaudy reality show, the other in the world of Oscar-worthy cinema — could possibly have in common.

"I firmly believe they sit together in complete silence," one person wrote on X. Such reactions to Jenner and Chalamet are not confined to social media's most hyperactive posters; I've heard them firsthand. A friend of mine recently said she couldn't shake the feeling that Jenner and Chalamet "don't exist in the same celebrity timeline."

Conventional wisdom suggests a relationship this puzzling could be bad business for both parties. But it turns out that confusing the pop-culture-following public may actually be a smart strategy.

Two public relations experts told Business Insider the stream of confused responses to this celebrity coupling represents a job well done by Jenner and Chalamet's respective PR teams.

It's a sign that both of their carefully cultivated individual brands are strong. So if you feel the friction from those brands clashing, you're not alone — that's precisely what makes the couple so fun to doubt.

A tale of 2 very different celebrities

Evan Nierman, the CEO of the crisis PR firm Red Banyan, described Jenner's brand as ultravisible, social media-heavy, and incessantly self-promotional. Meanwhile, Chalamet has made a point of pitching himself as an artist with discernment and taste.

"The problem that people are having is those two different personas seem at odds with one another," Nierman said. "The kind of brooding, superserious, superauthentic actor clashes with the Kardashian model, and I think that's probably why people are having such a hard time understanding the pairing of the two of them."

In reality, the public's reaction to Jenner and Chalamet as a couple has nothing to do with their personalities or compatibility behind closed doors. It has everything to do with brand positioning and integration strategies, likely orchestrated — or, at the very least, closely monitored — by large teams of publicists, image consultants, and managers (in Jenner's case, a "momager").

"PR can play a much bigger role in the things that you see coming out of Hollywood than most people at home would guess," Mike Fahey, the founder and CEO of the PR agency Fahey Communications, told BI. "A lot of those things that seem like happy accidents are actually by design."

But there's an important distinction between our traditional understanding of a "PR relationship," one that's been orchestrated by celebrities' respective teams to generate mutually beneficial publicity, and a real relationship that has been carefully managed by PR to maximize its impact.

Yes, celebrities have a lot to gain by cross-pollinating their fan bases. But the "Kymothée" curiosity feels different from, say, Tom Hiddleston getting papped wearing a T-shirt declaring his love for Taylor Swift.

Jenner and Chalamet are simply too odd a match for people to believe they have a calculated arrangement, or that they're being prodded to perform affection for the cameras. To what end? To cross-promote "Dune" on "The Kardashians"? To sell a Bob Dylan-inspired makeup line by Kylie Cosmetics?

So something must be keeping them together. Could it be… love? Well, yes, maybe. Why not?

The slow rollout of Kymothée was PR perfection

The media rollout of Jenner and Chalamet's relationship was drawn out over several months, nudged along by blurry photos of Jenner's car in Chalamet's driveway and anonymous tips sent to the gossip aggregator Deuxmoi before the two were eventually spotted kissing at a Beyoncé concert in September 2023. Even when Jenner and Chalamet attended several awards shows together, including two consecutive Golden Globes, they avoided the spectacle of a red carpet appearance as a couple until just last week.

A power couple's red carpet debut is a big deal in Hollywood — for comparison, Swift has never walked one with any boyfriend — but Jenner and Chalamet still kept it relatively low-key. Instead of posing for photos together at a star-studded event like the Met Gala or the Oscars, they staged their official debut at a sparsely attended ceremony in Rome: the David di Donatello Awards, where Chalamet received an honorary award for cinematic excellence.

Their relationship's incremental, tempered launch created plenty of space for suspicion and conspiracy theories to flourish. But counterintuitively, both Nierman and Fahey said that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

"It's leading to more confusion, but it's also doing exactly what it's intended to do, which is sparking ever more interest," Nierman said. "A series of slow strategic leaks that are then followed by a red carpet debut is a PR move that's designed to generate buzz and to get people talking."

If Jenner and Chalamet had opted for a hard launch — a formal announcement, perhaps, or a sit-down interview for a magazine cover — it could have encouraged fans to come to grips with their romance more quickly, or to understand their connection more deeply. That would take away the mystique, which is the very thing that's keeping us interested.

"If I were a Kardashian and I was sitting on this relationship, I would do the exact same thing. I would be like, 'I want to get as much mileage out of this as possible. It means that I don't have to do other things. Let's milk this for all it's worth,'" Fahey said. "They've created this media firestorm while doing very little."

More than two years after Jenner and Chalamet were linked, they still have valuable cards to play — their first selfie shared on Instagram, for example, or Chalamet's debut appearance on "The Kardashians."

"When that happens, it's going to be a big cash cow payday for them, and that's why they're so deliberate in what they do," Fahey said of the Oscar nominee's seemingly inevitable appearance on Jenner's Hulu reality show. "There are no accidents in the Kardashian family."

Each new milestone will likely spawn a new round of headlines, TikToks, and heated debates in my group chats. I anticipate receiving many more texts like, "I can't believe they're still together," and, "I still don't get it."

Here, "still" is the operative word. The ongoing disbelief that Jenner and Chalamet are a match is not a symptom of a PR rollout gone wrong. In fact, it's probably the opposite.

"It's been played to perfection," Nierman said. "It keeps us guessing. It keeps us talking, and that's entirely the point."

• Nicole Flender knew her son, Thimothée Chalamet, was going to be a success from early on.
• Flender is also mom to Pauline Chalamet, an actor and director who recently made her a grandma.
• She says Hollywood hasn't changed her incredibly famous son.

She knew he was going to be a star before everyone else.

She knew it long before her then-teen son ambled onto the stage of the 1,150-seat auditorium at New York's LaGuardia High School with his baggy jeans falling off his lanky frame, stealing the annual talent show with his Lil' Timmy Tim rapper routine; before he made eating a peach an X-rated sex act in the coming-of-age film "Call Me By Your Name"; and before he'd flip his mop of wild chestnut curls and have a gaggle of girls scream his name.

In fact, as the mother of 29-year-old actor Timothée Chalamet, Nicole Flender knew he was going to be a success when he truly was a "complete unknown."

Before his baby face was on the cover of Time magazine, before he was the answer to a New York Times crossword puzzle, and long before his style made the best-dressed lists, he was just her son.

"He was a normal kid," Flender said. "He wanted to be a soccer star."

She's a mom to 2 stars

She knew the theater was his calling when the crowd went wild for his high school rap persona — and not just because she was a biased mom who recognized his spark. "Everybody loved it," she told Business Insider.

His star has certainly risen. He's played fighters, lovers, Willy Wonka, and even King Henry V. He's been in seven best picture Oscar-nominated films and twice been nominated for Academy Awards, for his performance as a lovestruck teen in "Call Me By Your Name" and as musician Bob Dylan in the biopic "A Complete Unknown."

Flender is often his plus-one on the red carpet. "The photographers love us," she said. "They always want me to get in the picture. They like to see a son who is close to his mother."

She's in a distinctive position as the mother of two stars. Timothée's sister, Pauline Chalamet, four years his senior, is an actor and a director who splits her time between Paris and Los Angeles. She recently starred in Mindy Kaling's HBO Max series, "The Sex Lives of College Girls."

Thanks to Pauline, Flender will celebrate her first Mother's Day as a grandma. "That's what I'll be called — it's what my grandmother was called and what my kids called my mom," she said.

She's not surprised her kids are talented

Flender isn't surprised that her kids have talent. They come from a showbiz family. Their grandmother, Enid Flender, danced on Broadway in shows like "Kiss Me Kate," and their grandfather, Hal Flender, was an author and television writer who worked with many comedy greats, including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Woody Allen.

She's a trained ballerina who spent years on national tours with musicals including "Fiddler" and "Gypsy." Her brother Rodman Flender, a child actor, has been a filmmaker and TV director for shows like "The Office" and "Ugly Betty."

Timothée was a performer at a young age, entertaining family, friends, and classmates. In elementary school, he did Disney commercials. In middle school, he appeared on "Law & Order." Flender excitedly emailed everyone she knew about his prime-time debut, even though his character was murdered in the first minutes of the show.

Flender modestly takes little credit for her kids' success. Both carved their own paths, she said. Pauline pursued ballet, starring in "The Nutcracker" at Lincoln Center with the School of American Ballet. "It was like training for the Olympics," Flender said. Now she has her own production company.

Timothée excelled at travel soccer, she said, and his chess, sports, and Tae Kwon Do trophies still adorn the shelves in her theater district apartment, along with his acting awards.

She used to call him Tiny Tim

Known as "Timmy" to his friends and family, she called him "Tiny Tim" or "Toothless Tim" and later "Tall Tim" on family holiday cards, depending on his current status.

"He's always been independent," she said. At 17, Timothée had his parents (his French dad is a former journalist) sign papers saying he didn't need a chaperone in Canada to film "Interstellar," in which he plays Matthew McConaughey's son. "He makes his own decisions about what projects to pursue," she said, adding that she's more of a cheerleader than a "momager."

In fact, her kids rarely ask her for counsel on big life decisions. "He told me after the fact" that he had purchased what's reportedly an $11 million mansion in Beverly Hills, despite the fact that she's a real estate agent at the Corcoran Group in New York.

She also avoids offering dating advice. Her son has had a roster of celebrity girlfriends, starting with Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon in high school, the Mexican singer Eiza González, and Johnny Depp's daughter, Lily-Rose. He's now dating Kylie Jenner, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and part of the Kardashian clan.

Flender is often the last to know what's happening in her son's life. "Kylie was the one who told me that he would host 'Saturday Night Live' for the third time," she said.

Hollywood hasn't changed her son

Being his date for the SAG Awards was also a last-minute surprise. "I got a text on the Thursday before to ask if I'd be his date for that Saturday," she said.

She raided her closet for a slinky black gown and hopped on a plane. When she joined him for the Oscars, she borrowed a royal-blue number from a friend.

There are perks to being a star's mom during award season: She's had full-glam hair and makeup done and been outfitted by Louis Vuitton. Cartier jewelers once blinged her with priceless diamonds for the Golden Globes. "They knock on your hotel door at 9 o'clock the next morning, asking for them back," she noted.

Hollywood hasn't changed her son, she said. "Not at heart. He keeps himself grounded."

She remembers when she and Timothée could walk down the street unrecognized. Now, even a neighborhood stroll could end up as paparazzi fodder.

"They photographed us together in Soho and LA a year apart, and I was wearing the same vintage Fiorucci shirt," she said, laughing. "He bought it for me, so I wear it when we're together to show him I love it."

Despite her children's fame, Flender is very private. She'll occasionally post an Instagram photo of herself dolled up for an awards show, but she avoids reading social media mentions of either kid.

She's often surrounded by A-listers but says she's not starstruck. Yet, she does admit to dropping her son's name to get a photo with the basketball legend Charles Barkley at a bar recently. "I told him my son was a big basketball fan and he was happy to pose with 'Timothée's mom,'" she said.

Most of all, she's proud to have two kids who have surpassed anything she could've imagined. "All I want is for them to be happy," she said.