Exercise
may significantly reduce your risk for many types of cancer, including some of
the most lethal forms of the disease, a large review suggests.
Working out for even a couple of hours a week appears to shrink the risk of
breast, colon and lung cancer, said researchers who looked at 1.4 million
adults.
"Those are three of the four major cancers that affect Americans
today," said Marilie Gammon. She is a professor of epidemiology with the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Public Health.
And fitness buffs, take heart - your cancer risk appears to continue to decline
as you rack up hours of physical activity, with no apparent upper plateau, said
study lead author Steven Moore, an investigator with the U.S. National Cancer
Institute.
"The more activity, the more the benefit," Moore said. "As
people did more, their risk continued to lower."
It should be noted, however, that the study only found an association between
exercise and reduced cancer risk; it did not prove a cause-and-effect
relationship.
In the study, regular exercise wound up being linked to a reduced risk of 13
cancers in all, the researchers said. The others were leukemia, myeloma and
cancers of the esophagus, liver, kidney, stomach, endometrium, rectum, bladder,
and head and neck.
Current federal guidelines for exercise -- 150 minutes of moderate-intensity
activity a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity -- are aimed at heart
health but also serve well for cancer prevention, Moore said.
Moderate-intensity exercise involves pursuits such as brisk walking or tennis,
while vigorous intensity exercise involves heart-pumping activities such as
jogging or swimming laps, according to the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention
and Health Promotion. ■
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