Yahoo Lifestyle Scientists Say Doing This One Thing Every Day Can Lower Your Cancer Risk
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You probably know you can lower your risk of cancer by quitting smoking or drinking less alcohol, but a new study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that walking may have a similar protective effect. Even better: you don’t even have to clock 10,000 steps a day or be a fast walker to see a benefit.
Physical activity seems to be the ultimate multitasking move for improved health. It’s already been linked to a wide variety of benefits, from a healthier heart and higher-quality sleep to less anxiety and a longer life. This new study signals that cancer prevention might deserve a spot on the list of exercise perks as well.
But how much do you really need to walk to lower your risk of cancer? And how fast do your feet need to move? To find out exactly what this new research says about the link between exercise and cancer risk, we reached out to the lead author.
What the researchers did
In this study, scientists took data from the UK Biobank study in which more than 85,000 adults wore devices that tracked their total daily activity, activity intensity and daily step count for a week. After an average of 5.8 years passed, 2,633 of the participants had been diagnosed with one of 13 types of cancer. The researchers then crunched all the numbers and adjusted for at least nine major cancer risk factors (such as smoking, drinking alcohol and eating red meat) to figure out how a person’s physical activity might lower their risk of developing cancer.
What the study found
People who walked an average of 7,000 steps per day had a 11% lower risk of cancer than those who only took 5,000 daily steps. Those with a daily step count of 9,000 had a 16% lower risk. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem like walking more than 9,000 steps will amplify the cancer-prevention benefits much. “Above this level, it was not clear if the risk reductions linked to higher step counts were statistically different,” says Alaina Shreves, M.S., a predoctoral fellow in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health and the lead author of the study.
Slow walkers, rejoice! One of the most interesting (and exciting!) findings to come out of this research is that you don’t have to be a power walker to lower your risk of cancer. “The pace of the steps — step intensity — seemed to be less important,” says Shreves.
How does exercise help lower your risk of cancer?
Researchers aren’t exactly sure why physical activity seems to have a protective effect against cancer, but there are some theories. “For example, exercise can bring about beneficial changes in hormones, improve insulin sensitivity, lower inflammation and may improve immune function,” says Shreves. On top of that, she notes, long-term efforts to reduce sitting time in favor of increased activity have found improvements in waist measurements, body fat, blood sugar and insulin levels, cholesterol and blood pressure. Essentially, exercise is good for so many parts of your body that it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact cancer-protecting mechanism.
What does this mean for future research?
To get an even better idea of how exercise may help prevent cancer, “future studies should explore how physical activity affects the risk of specific types of cancer,” Shreves says. For instance, maybe it has a bigger impact on a person’s risk of say, prostate cancer than lung cancer.
The bottom line
As with most studies, more research is needed to confirm the results, but these results are promising. “Increasing your daily physical activity may help reduce the risk of certain cancers, regardless of the intensity of the activity,” says Shreves. “Find activities you enjoy, like walking your dog or taking a stroll, and stay active!”
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