Apples for Health- Exercise helps prevent colon cancer

Exercise helps prevent colon cancer

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- A meta-analysis by U.S. researchers finds people who exercise lower their risk of colon cancer.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University combined and analyzed several decades worth of data from past studies on how exercise affects colon cancer risk. They found that people who exercised the most were 24 percent less likely to develop the disease than those who exercised the least.

"What's really compelling is that we see the association between exercise and lower colon cancer risk regardless of how physical activity was measured in the studies," lead study author Kathleen Y. Wolin of the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University said in a statement. "That indicates that this is a robust association and gives all the more evidence that physical activity is truly protective against colon cancer."

The meta-analysis, published in the British Journal of Cancer, was based on 52 studies going back to l984. The researchers eliminated from consideration any study that combined both colon and rectal cancer because exercise has not been shown to affect rectal cancer risk.

"The beneficial effect of exercise holds across all sorts of activities," said Wolin. "And it holds for both men and women. There is an ever-growing body of evidence that the behavior choices we make affect our cancer risk. Physical activity is at the top of the list of ways that you can reduce your risk of colon cancer."