Exercise Cuts Breast Cancer Recurrence Rates

A few hours of exercise a week may offer as much protection against a recurrence of breast cancer as does chemotherapy and hormonal or drug treatments. That’s the surprising conclusion of a new study led by researchers at the Harvard Medical School and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to a report of the study published in the Washington Post, the findings are particularly striking because the benefit appeared strongest for the most common form of breast cancer, and it held true regardless of whether the cancer was diagnosed early or not until after it had spread. The paper reports that breast cancer patients who walk or do other kinds of moderate exercise for three to five hours a week are about 50 percent less likely to die from the disease than sedentary women.