Finally I’ve got some good news for my mom and her friends–who have been fretting over breast cancer risks ever since one of their close pal died of this cancer a couple of years ago. To keep the dreaded disease at bay, these women on the wrong side of 50, need to stay fit and physically active. And my mom should not worry because she is quite active, even though she crossed 58 last month.
She’ll be too glad to know that moderate to vigorous exercise have been found to reduce the risk of breast cancer in post-menopausal women, especially if the women are not overweight. Simply put, it’s not just aerobics, running or fast jogging, but heavy housework like scrubbing floors or washing windows too can keep malignant breast disease at bay in older women. This is the finding of a group of researchers based at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland published in the journal BMC Cancer.
Led by Dr. Tricia M Peters at the institute, an international team of researchers investigated the link between breast cancer and vigorous exercise. Researchers asked more than 110,000 post-menopausal women to rate their physical activity levels–including everyday tasks like housework, work-related activity and leisure activity–at various stages of life. It was found that over the next six and half years of follow up, women in the group who had done more than 7 hours per week of moderate-to-vigorous exercise for the last 10 years were 16 per cent less likely to develop breast cancer than those who were inactive.
However, no link was observed between breast cancer risk and physical activity in women who were active at a younger age. Neither did light exercise (such as walking, playing golf, light jogging or less strenuous household works like vacuuming or gardening) help. The researchers categorically mention the benefits of heavy housework, garden digging, chopping wood, strenuous sports and exercise (such as, running, fast jogging and aerobics), cycling on hills (as opposed to on the flat surface), and even fast dancing.
Dr Peters writes, “Our findings could help inform the mechanisms of the physical activity-breast cancer relationship. With breast cancer still claiming so many lives, all the information of potential preventive measures we can get is vital”.
So, my mom, who loves heavy household work, has nothing to worry about.
This article is brought to you by breastcancerstudies.blogspot.com
Dr Sanjit Bagchi is a renowned Physician and Medical Journalist. He runs a blog on Breast Cancer
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