A new study has shed light on one of the most talked about aspect of human body and has drawn a link to one of the most dreaded diseases. The study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has found that physical fitness, especially cardiorespiratory fitness, reduces the risk of nine types of cancer: head and neck, stomach, pancreas, liver, colon, rectum, esophagus, kidney, and lung. It found that physical fitness can reduce the risk of certain types of cancer by up to 40%.
What is cardiorespiratory fitness?
Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to a person’s ability to do aerobic exercise, such as running, cycling, and swimming for sustained periods, or even to climb stairs. It estimates the capacity of the circulatory and respiratory systems to supply oxygen to skeletal muscle mitochondria. The current study finds its impact on lowering the risk of certain types of cancer.
Over 1 million males were studied for the research
For the study, the researchers analysed the health and fitness data of more than one million males who underwent military conscription from 1968 to 2005. To determine cardiorespiratory illness, the men underwent a “maximal aerobic workload” test.
What did the study find?
The study found that men with the highest fitness levels had lower risk of the nine types of cancer mentioned above. It found that good fitness level decreased rectal cancer risk by 5%, pancreatic cancer by 12%, lung cancer by 42% and liver cancer by 40%. “This study highlights that fitness is also on the list of lifestyle risk factors that could change the risk of developing cancers, as has been shown previously for other diseases. Our results also show that, as for other diseases, the association seems to be linear, meaning that every positive change in fitness is associated with some risk reduction. Hence, even small additions count,” said Dr. Aron Onerup, the lead author of the study told Healthline.
Risk of prostate cancer and skin cancer increased
The team of researchers found that higher cardiorespiratory fitness was also associated with a 7% heightened risk of prostate cancer and a 31% heightened risk of skin cancer. "The final analysis included more than 1 million men (1,078,000), 84,117 (7%) of whom subsequently developed cancer in at least one site during an average monitoring period of 33 years," the study found.
