It has long been known that exercise reduces the risk of all kinds of cancer, but good news: you may not necessarily have to work up a sweat in the gym for that. Just 4.5 minutes of intensive exercise can already reduce the risk of some cancers by a third.
Australian researchers used data from 22,000 people with an average age of 62 who did not or hardly exercised. They wore an activity tracker to measure their daily movement. The researchers then compared the medical records up to seven years after the measurement to see how many people developed cancer.
Time for VILPA
The results were startling: just 4 to 5 minutes of intensive exercise was linked to a substantially lower cancer risk, compared to the people who did not exercise at all. It involves intensive, short-term physical activity, which normally occurs in daily life. Think of running to the bus, carrying heavy shopping bags or playing outside with the kids. It will be in English Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity referred to as VILPA for short.
“VILPA is a bit like applying the principles of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to your daily life,” says lead researcher Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis of the University of Sydney. He says that people who do not exercise run a greater risk of breast and colon cancer, among other things, but until now it was not clear what the influence is of less structured forms of intensive physical activity.
4.5 minutes is enough
“We know that the majority of middle-aged people do not exercise regularly, which increases their cancer risk, but now with activity trackers we have been able to look at the impact of short bursts of physical activity as part of everyday life,” said Stamatakis. .
“Remarkably, increasing the intensity of daily activities for just 4 to 5 minutes per day, performed in short bursts of 1 minute, has been linked to an 18 to 32 percent decrease in cancer risk for cancers linked to to physical activity.”
The more the better
Those who exercised intensively for 3.5 minutes a day had an 18 percent lower risk of cancer in general. That rose to 32 percent in exercise-related cancers for those who achieved 4.5 minutes of intensive exercise per day. The biggest gain is between no exercise at all and a few minutes a day, but those who exercise more see the risk of cancer fall even further.
Incidentally, the study only shows that there is a connection, which does not necessarily have to be causal. But the researchers emphasize that the link is very strong and they refer to previous studies that showed that this short intensive activity leads to a rapid improvement in fitness, which is a possible biological explanation for the decreased cancer risk. Other explanations are that physical activity improves insulin sensitivity and decreases chronic inflammation levels.
Healthy weight
“We need to explore this relationship further with more robust studies, but it seems that VILPA is a promising low-cost way to reduce the risk of cancer in people who find it difficult to maintain structured exercise,” said Stamatakis.
Professor Karen Canfell, director of the Daffodil Centre, a partnership between Cancer Council NSW in de University of Sydneyalso says that regular exercise is an important way to prevent cancer, because of its direct physiological benefits, but also indirectly because it helps to maintain a healthy weight.
Thirteen types of cancer
“More than 1,800 cancer diagnoses in Australia this year are likely to be the direct result of a lack of physical activity, with many more cases indirectly linked to lack of exercise due to its link to obesity, another risk factor for cancer,” said Canfell, who did not participate in the investigation. “This new study shows that the more you exercise at a higher intensity as part of your daily life, the lower your risk of cancer. This is especially true for the thirteen species associated with physical inactivity,” concludes the professor.
And of course it is a small effort to move intensively for 4.5 minutes a day. That sounds a lot better than an hour of slogging in the gym.
2023-07-31 09:30:49
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