Step 96: Avoid the Big C -- Exercise

Does taking a walk help prevent cancer? There is increasing evidence that cancer is not just a random event -- that it really has a strong relationship to how we live our lives. The linkage between cigarette smoking and lung and bladder cancers is the prime example. But if it is so obvious that how we live causes cancer, isn't there similar evidence that how we live helps to prevent it? Yes.

Keep Illness at Bay

More and more researchers are finding that physical fitness helps us prevent cancer. No one suggests that being fit eliminates the risk of cancer altogether, but numerous studies strikingly illustrate lower rates of the disease in people who exercise. Some forms of cancer seem particularly responsive to an active lifestyle, colon cancer among them. It has been known for some time that the length of time it takes food to transit your intestinal tract from entrance to exit is considerably shorter in active people. Without question, diet, too, has a lot to do with cancer. The inference then is that if some cancer-provoking material stays in contact with the lining of the colon for longer, it provides an increased risk of colon cancer. Whether this is the explanation for its protective role or not is uncertain, but the lower rate of colon cancer in active people is unassailable.

Special Benefits to Women

The other principal types of malignancy that have been shown to react to an actively lived life are the reproductive organ cancers: breast, uterus and ovary for women, and prostate for men. The possible mechanism behind such protection is the same for both sexes, involving a lowering of tissue exposure to levels of the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone. For women it is clear, particularly in those young elite athletes whose menstrual patterns are disrupted by their intense pursuit of fitness, that fitness and low body fat content dramatically lower estrogen levels. Consequently, those organs that are targets for estrogen will not be bathed in decades of higher estrogen amounts and consequently have less potential for malignancy.

Reduced Risks for Men, Too

For men, the story is the same. Exercise lowers testosterone levels, and the prostate is clearly sensitive to testosterone. Men with prostate cancer have been reported to have higher levels of testosterone than others. Often the first treatment for prostate cancer that has spread is castration. Such a step drops testosterone levels virtually to zero and frequently results in a marked reduction of the spread of the tumor. If your prostate gland is exposed to a lower testosterone level over the lifetime, the risk decreases dramatically. Other cancers, such as lung cancer, are also low in fit people, but this is felt to be due to the fact that few fit people smoke.

Cancer is such an evil villain that I feel every one of us should be doing everything we can to prevent it. Cure is still too rare, so prevention is vital. Being physically fit has excellent credentials as a vaccine we should all be using regularly.