Did you know vacuuming the house or running after the kids could lower your risk of some cancers?
New research led by the University of Sydney reveals the potential benefits of vigorous incidental activity. The study suggests a total of just 4.5 minutes of vigorous activity that makes you huff and puff during daily tasks could reduce the risk of some cancers by up to 18 percent and up to 32 percent for cancers linked to physical activity.
The study used data from wearable devices to track the daily activity of over 22,000 ‘non-exercisers’. Participants were followed up over a period of seven years via their clinical health records to monitor for cancer. As few as four to five minutes of Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity (VILPA) were associated with a substantially lower cancer risk compared to those who undertook no VILPA.
VILPA was coined by researchers at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre to describe very short bursts of activity – around one minute each – we do with gusto each day. This includes activities like vigorous housework, carrying heavy shopping around the grocery store, bursts of power walking or playing high-energy games with the kids.
Overweight and obesity, defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health, are usually classified by body mass index (BMI) which is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of their height in metres (kg/m2).
BMI has been convincingly associated with the risk of at least 13 cancer types.
However, previous studies have mostly focused on single BMI measurements assessed at study baseline, which are measures of current BMI status.
Overweight and obesity over the life course may be more relevant risk factors for cancer, and capturing exposure to a high BMI over time might better reflect the relationship between long-term exposure to adiposity and cancer development.
Another recent study conducted from 2009 to 2018 using population-based electronic health records for 2,645,885 individuals aged 40 and over, living in Catalonia, Spain, and free of cancer in 2009, demonstrated that a longer duration, greater degree and younger age of onset of overweight and obesity during early adulthood, are positively associated with the risk of 18 types of cancer, including bowel cancer.
The median age of the participants was 56 years and 47% were males.
After 9 years of follow-up, 225,396 participants (9%) were diagnosed with one of the 26 cancer types of interest, including 37,812 with bowel cancer.
Notably, there was a stronger association between cumulative exposure to a BMI ≥ 25 and/or ≥30 kg/m2 (an indicator considering degree and duration of overweight/obesity) and the risk of bowel, gallbladder and biliary tract, breast postmenopausal, thyroid, and kidney cancers at lower values of these exposures, after which the increase in risk diminished.
The study’s findings seem to indicate that longer exposures to overweight and obesity (with or without accounting for the degree of overweight and obesity), as well as developing overweight and obesity at younger ages in early adulthood might increase cancer risk. This suggests that overweight and obesity prevention should start in early adulthood and that weight management and weight loss interventions leading to shorter durations of overweight and obesity might reduce cancer incidence.
