How Does Exercise Help In Lowering The Risk Of Cancer?

Most people know that exercise and physical activity is crucial to being physically fit, and is also crucial for pursuing a healthy lifestyle. There are also many other benefits of exercise that people don’t take into consideration. What may surprise you is that research shows that exercise helps in lowering the risk of deadly diseases such as cancer. Numerous studies have been done to establish the effectiveness of regular exercise in reducing cancer risk, and the results have been quite astonishing. A recent study from the American Cancer Society shows that exercise can lower the risk of 13 different types of cancer.

While research is ongoing to establish how exercise helps with lowering the risk of cancer, let’s dig into the current findings and understand the impact exercise creates.

Why Is It Important To Exercise And Be Physically Active?

Exercise plays a vital role in your overall well-being as every system in the body is reliant on physical activity. When you keep yourself active throughout the day, you feel better, and your body gets in a better position to fight diseases – even the deadliest ones. Regular workout and an active routine help you to:

• Maintain your body weight at healthy levels.
• Regulate hormone levels to keep them under control.
• Improve digestion and reduce toxins in the body.

All these factors are linked to lowering the risk of cancer. There are multiple other reasons and biological processes to associate physical activity with a lower risk of certain cancer types.

The Role Exercise Can Play In Preventing Cancer

Research shows that exercise can be a key factor in cancer prevention. It helps reduce insulin and estrogen levels in the body and curbs the development and progression of cancer. Insulin and other insulin-like growth factors can also accelerate tumor growth. Therefore, keeping them under control is essential to lowering cancer risk.

Exercise is also beneficial for reducing inflammation and helps improve the immune system, allowing the body to function properly and protect against diseases.

Research shows that exercising is an essential part of your daily routine and reduces the possibility of recurrence of certain cancers, like breast cancer.

Examples Of How Exercise Can Possibly Reduce The Risk Of Cancers

Now that you have a clear idea of what exercise does to improve your overall well-being and its role in preventing cancer, let’s try to go through a couple of examples and see how an exercise program may help cancer patients.

How Can Exercise Help Prevent Bowel Cancer?

You might already know that being physically active is associated with preventing bowel cancer by maintaining a healthy weight. There can be a couple of possible ways physical activity contributes to lowered bowel cancer risk. Here’s a brief explanation to help you understand.

• Moving waste through the bowel more quickly: Part of the bowel’s function is to use the nutrients from the food we eat and break down and dispose of everything that is not needed. This waste is then passed out of the body. When you are physically active and exercise regularly, all the waste passes through more quickly, and any harmful elements in the waste remain in the bowel for less time. Speeding up this process helps avoid contact with the cancer-causing agents, preventing bowel cancer.
  
• Reducing inflammation: Whenever the body sustains any kind of damage, it responds through inflammation. However, when there is too much inflammation, the cells start multiplying more frequently, and the risk of cancer increases. Research shows that maintaining a healthy weight can lower the risk of 13 different types of cancer. A major reason behind this is the fact that when you have less body fat, there is less inflammation around the body. Another possibility is that being active directly reduces the risk of bowel cancer by lowering the inflammation levels in the bowel.

How Can Exercise Help Prevent Breast Cancer?

Physical activity and exercise are also associated with lowering the risk of breast cancer. If you are physically active, you maintain a healthy body weight, and it is assumed to help prevent breast cancer. Some research also shows that exercise and elevated activity bring down the body’s estrogen levels, preventing breast cancer.

The research is ongoing to establish how this actually happens. A couple of possible situations can explain how the risk of breast cancer can be lowered with physical activity. Let’s have a look.

• Reduced hormone levels: The amount of fat in the body and the level of physical activity can both affect certain hormones in your body. Hormones serve as chemical messengers that go to different parts of the body to tell them what to do. Insulin and estrogen hormones could encourage frequent division of breast cells. If this frequent division grows out of control, it can lead to the development of breast cancer. Women who are physically active and maintain a healthy weight manage to keep the levels of these hormones under control, lowering the risk of breast cancer.
  
• Boosting your immune system: Physical activity can boost your immune system, making it more efficient. When the immune system is working optimally, the body can easily spot cells that might turn cancerous at some stage in the future. Any such cells are then removed before they become harmful.

The role of exercise and physical activity in lowering the risk of cancer is multifold. It reduces inflammation, regulates hormones and blood sugar, and improves your immune function. One of these mechanisms kicks in depending on the type of cancer and prevents its development and progression. While the research is ongoing, there is enough evidence to safely conclude that being physically active puts you at a lower risk for at least 13 different types of cancer. While it’s always a good idea to get into an exercise program, now we know that another nice benefit is that it helps to prevent cancer and avoid deadly diseases.