Sport and cancer

If you enter “sport and cancer” in the Google search engine, you will get more than 4 million results within a few seconds! If you add “health insurance” to “sport and cancer”, you still get 500,000 entries. The connections are clear and unambiguous.

People who exercise are less likely to get cancer!

In the face of the vast amount of research findings, it is a constant source of astonishment in everyday practice that most patients – even those who are otherwise well informed – and even doctors – have still not got the message. And I admit: when my daughter told me during her sports science studies that sport was able to reduce the incidence of cancer, my first reflex was to get more involved with her sports studies. Consistent as she is, she brought me some papers that prompted me to take a closer look at the facts.

Prof. Halle from the Technical University of Munich had shown data on the connection between breast cancer and physical activity, which he translated into German based on a study by Thune et al. from Norway. In this study, 25,624 women were included for 10 years. 351 of these developed breast cancer over the 10 years. However, the study showed that the probability of developing breast cancer decreased considerably with increasing activity, particularly in women who had not yet reached the menopause, and by almost 50% if they exercised intensively for more than 4 hours per week!

Even after the menopause, women who exercised more than 4 times a week also had a significantly lower risk of breast cancer. (see figure)

But that’s not all!

Exercise reduces mortality from breast cancer

Women with breast cancer clearly survive longer if they exercise more. Walking for more than 2 hours per week reduced mortality by 30% compared to the group of women who had undergone breast cancer surgery and walked for less than 1 hour per week. There are other studies on the connection between breast cancer and exercise, all of which come to the same conclusion: regular exercise reduces the risk of developing breast cancer and improves life expectancy even after surgery!(Holmes et al.)

But don’t do what a friend of mine did: after breast cancer surgery and chemotherapy, she was informed about the benefits of exercise for her prognosis. Tough as she is, she started running the very next morning, to the point of total exhaustion. The day after, she still had significantly elevated liver values and a greatly increased CK (a protein from the muscles). This is a typical example of the fact that the dose is also important in sport, a fact that we will be discussing more frequently.

Physical activity reduces the likelihood of developing bowel cancer

The figure on the relationship between physical activity and the likelihood of developing colorectal cancer also comes from the work of Prof. Halle, which my daughter presented to me as evidence between physical activity and cancer.

In this figure, data from the “Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort” published by Chao et al are translated into German and visualized at the same time.

This study included more than 70,000 men and more than 80,000 women, with an average age of 63. Of these, 940 were diagnosed with colon cancer and 399 with rectal cancer. During the study period of 7 years, the participants’ leisure activities – such as hiking, jogging, dancing, tennis, etc. – were also surveyed. This showed that more than 7 hours of leisure activities per week reduced the risk of developing colorectal cancer by 40%!

Only a few studies have been selected here from a large number of others. The direction is always the same:

Exercise reduces the likelihood of developing cancer and even improves the chances if cancer has already been diagnosed!

The American panel of experts who investigated the link between exercise and cancer and presented their findings to the US Department of Health and Human Services (2018) found a lower incidence of the following types of cancer in people who exercise:

• Bladder cancer,
• Breast cancer,
• Colon carcinoma,
• Esophageal carcinoma
• Gastric carcinoma
• Renal carcinoma.

In the case of lung cancer, a connection was found in a large summary. However, the experts were unable to sufficiently rule out the possibility of smoking falsifying the results. For this reason, lung cancer was not included in the list.