More active leisure time significantly reduces the risk of cancer

Physical leisure activities protect against various rare and common cancers
Cancer is a disease that today poses a major threat to people in our society. For years, doctors have been looking for ways and means of preventing the disease from developing or providing better treatment. Researchers now find that participating in recreational activities helps to massively increase protection against a variety of cancers.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health found in an investigation that active people who do a lot of physical activity in their spare time are better protected against different types of cancer. The physicians published the results of their study in the journal "JAMA Internal Medicine".

Physical activity, such as walking, jogging or cycling, reduces our risk of various cancers. Thus, we should all overcome our inner "bastard" and more often engage in active leisure activities. (Image: marioArte / fotolia.com)

Leisure physical activities improve protection against 13 out of 26 cancers
Researchers analyzed the data from twelve previous studies for their study and, with a few exceptions, all subjects had better protection against 13 out of 26 cancers if they had a more active leisure time. A total of about 1.44 million people participated in the twelve studies, say the doctors. The results were clear: more active people had a 42 percent lower risk for esophageal cancer, a 27 percent lower risk of liver cancer, a 26 percent lower risk of lung cancer and a 23 percent lower risk of developing kidney cancer, the authors explain.

Taking into account the body weight, the researchers also found a reduced cancer risk for ten out of 13 cancers, which is triggered by higher levels of physical leisure activities. Steven C. Moore of the National Institutes of Health. With regard to smoking, decreased physical activity only the risk of lung cancer and other smoking-related cancers are not affected. However, the higher activity also increased the risk of malignant melanoma by 27 percent and the risk of prostate cancer increased by about five percent, add the physicians.

Physical activity could become a key component in cancer prevention
Our results indicate that these associations are broadly generalizable across populations, including overweight and obese individuals or people who smoke Moore. These results support the promotion of physical activity as a key component of population-wide cancer prevention. The investigation looked at physical activity in the various studies. The experts tried to measure how much energy per minute (measured in MET, "metabolic equivalent of task") was spent on specific activities. For example, moderate activity such as walking requires about 3 to 5.9 MET. Faster running already consumed more than 6 MET, explain the authors.

The participants included in the analysis were asked about their specific activities, such as walking, running or swimming. In addition, the physicians determined the weekly participation in moderate activities. The average was around eight MET per hour per week for most participants, equivalent to about 150 minutes of moderate activity, such as normal walking, the researchers say. The authors of the study also looked at the effects on many rare tumors. In a way, they were able to confirm what the physicians had already seen in the more common tumors. This is good news as physical activity could also become an important risk minimization strategy for rare tumor types, the researchers explain. However, more research is needed now to determine which mechanisms are involved in reducing cancer risk, the experts add. (As)