Exercising Reduces the Threat of Cancer

Newly released study links exercising to the reduction of 13 different types of cancer. The study is called “Association of Leisure-Time Physical Activity With Risk of 26 Types of Cancer in 1.44 Million Adults” and was published this Monday in JAMA, Internal Medicine.

While it is known to lift moods, protect hearts and preserve memory, exercising also seems to work against a broad array of malignant cell diseases.

The more you include exercising in your life, the better; even for smokers or ex-smokers and people suffering from obesity conditions. The rule of thumb is regular exercise.

The study reflects the findings of other 12 large studies in which over one million people reported how often and how much exercise they do. Tracking participants from nine to up to twenty years, cancer diagnoses were detected.

The researchers took the intensity and duration of the exercising and standardized them to give participants scores from 1 to 100. Correlating the score with the cancer rates, researchers were able to link higher scores of exercising with fewer cancer diagnoses.

These participants had 10 to 42 percent chances not to develop these types of cancers: of the breast (10%), cancers of the rectum or bladder (13%), myeloma (17%), colon (16%), head and neck (15%), myeloid leukemia (20%), gastric cardia and endometrial (22%), lung (26%), liver (27%) and esophageal adenocarcinoma (42%).

These results push exercising as being more “suggestive” for cancers to the small intestine and gall bladder, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The findings “support promoting physical activity as a key component of population-wide cancer-prevention and control efforts,” write the authors.

When the researchers took into account obesity and smoking as a factor, the results showed that despite these conditions cancers to the liver, gastric cardia and endometrium have lower rates when correlated to exercising.

The authors want to encourage physicians all over the country to tell obese and smoking patients that exercise does not only help them lose weight and reduce smoking effects, but it also helps them increase their odds of not developing cancer.

Future studies should evaluate timing, type, and intensity of the exercising and give a better perspective into the link between fitness and cancer reducing methods.

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