Does Exercise Really Decrease Cancer Risk?
Posted on March 23rd, 2010 in Cancer, Exercise, Weight Management, Wellness Coaching
Perhaps you’ve heard reports about exercise serving as a deterrent to cancers. And if you’ve caught those headlines, it certainly seems encouraging to know that added activity could have additional positive benefits.
Here’s the important truth about this useful news. You must accumulate 30 or more minutes of moderate-intensity exercise most days of the week to make a real difference in your risk. Your exercise level should contribute to maintenance of a healthy weight. Overweight or obese people are at higher cancer risk than those at normal weight.
Increasing your daily activity by parking farther away from the grocery store or taking a flight of stairs at work is not enough exercise to lower your cancer risk. If the primary goal is to hold a healthy weight, you’ve got to be active enough to make that happen.
One-third of the 500,000+ cancer deaths that occur in the U.S.annually can be traced to diet and habits of physical activity. To put that statistic in perspective, it’s about of tobacco-related cancer deaths.* Researcher Colleen Doyle, MS, RD, Director of Nutrition and Physical Activity for the American Cancer Society, states “For years, we’ve told people what habits to adopt to lower their cancer risk, but it has become increasingly clear we need to create environments that make it easier to make healthy choices.”* Therefore, accumulating 30 or more minutes of moderate-intensity exercise most days of the week along with a healthy diet can help reduce your cancer risk.
In other words, being health comes back to exercising and eating right once again.
* Sources Cited
Kushi, L. (2006, September). CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. News Release, American Cancer Society. , pp. 254-281.
Warner, J. (2006, September/October). Cancer Health Center. Retrieved April 2010, from WebMD : http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20060928/do-real-exercise-to-prevent-cancer
For most companies, the motivation to incorporate wellness programs for employees is two-fold: (1) to help people live healthier lives and (2) reduce overall healthcare expenditures for the company. Both goals are worthwhile, and both directly benefit employees.
