Want to Beat Cancer? Exercise!

Research shows a strong correlation between exercise and reduction in breast cancer. In a 2006 study in the journal Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prevention, researchers evaluated participants, ages 25 to 64 years, in Shanghai, China from August 1996 to March 1998. Women were given a questionnaire in which they reported their exercise patterns from adolescence through the ten years before the interview. The researchers determined:

• Exercise in adolescence and within the past ten years was also associated with decreased risk for receptor-positive and receptor-negative breast cancers s in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women. That means, basically, all women.

• Exercises benefited with a risk reduction of 30 to 60 percent over non-execisers. Again, this was true of premenopausal and postmenopausal women. As in, all.

• Activity during both adolescence and the last 10 years resulted in a risk reduction of 62 to 79 percent for receptor-negative breast cancer.

• Postmenopausal women benefited the most from exercise.

• Sweating during exercise within the last 10 years was also associated with decreased risk for receptor-positive and receptor-negative breast cancers among postmenopausal women.

So we mature ladies benefit from a little sweat. Researchers aren’t sure why.

SA Adams, CE Matthews, JR Hebert, CG Moore, JE Cunningham, XO Shu, J Fulton, Y Gao,and W Zheng, “Association of physical activity with hormone receptor status: the Shanghai Breast Cancer Study,” Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prevention, June15, 2006, Volume 15, No. 6, 1170-8.