TipsFocus.com

A new study reported that regular exercise or physical activity can help sufferers in the fight against cancer.

It has been discovered that regular exercise can help to bring down the risk of cancer in women by 20 percent in a study done by the National Cancer Institue. The fact that exercise has many positive effects on your body such as body weight, immune system functions and hormone functions makes researchers believe that exercise is extremely helpful in reducing the risk of cancer even though there hasn’t been an association between exercise and cancer that has been proven.

Dr. Susan Boolbol says, “This is one of the first studies that has shown that in women who do not have a history of breast cancer, they can actually reduce their risk by exercising.”

Exercise cuts the levels of insulin, a hormone that causes most of the body’s cells to take up glucose from the blood and triggers faster cell growth, boosting women’s risk of breast cancer and recurrence of the disease.

The researchers followed up 32,000 women who enrolled in the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project Follow-up Study to examine if there was an association between risk of breast cancer and physical exercise.

Scientists also found that, when people sleep less than seven hours a night, the benefits of regular exercise may disappear. In some cases, the risk of developing cancer may actually double. “We think it’s quite interesting and intriguing. It’s kind of a first look into this. It isn’t something that has been widely studied,” said James McClain of the National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. government’s National Institutes of Health.

Another study led by Freedman DM and colleagues from National Cancer Institute and published in Oct 21, 2008 issue of Cancer Causes and Control found physical activity like walking and hiking for 10 or more hours per week rendered the greatest protection against breast cancer in women, a 43 percent reduction in the risk.