According to research from the National Cancer Institute in Maryland and published in Breast Cancer Research journal, women who regularly carry out vigorous exercise in their 60s are up to 30 per cent less likely to develop breast cancer, than those who exercise gently. The findings add to the weight of evidence about the power of exercise to reduce the risk of breast cancer, which kills more than 1,000 women in the UK every month.

The American researchers made the connection after tracking the health of more than 32,000 women, average age 61, for eleven years. At the start of the study the women were asked how much gentle and strenuous exercise they did. Gentle exercise included light housework as well as walking, golf and cycling. Examples of vigorous exercise included heavy housework, such as cleaning floors, digging the garden and chopping wood as well as running, tennis and dancing. Eleven years later 1,506 of the women had developed cancer. Analysis showed that vigorous but not gentle exercise was more likely to cut the risk in women who were not overweight.

 

Although the Maryland study suggested that vigorous exercise is more beneficial for reducing risk, other studies have shown that gentler exercise is better than no exercise at all and can help ward off breast cancer. A six year study of more than 20,000 European women recently concluded that hovering, dusting and other light domestic chores cut the risk by up to 30 per cent.

 

There is still much debate about the best form of exercise and how much women over 60 should do to reduce their breast cancer risk but we do know that regular exercise is highly recommended because it can help prevent weight gain and obesity which are known to increase breast cancer risk.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 3:00 am and is filed under Breast Cancer, Exercise, In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.