Middle Age Fitness Keeps Some Cancer At Bay

Researchers are still miles away from telling us why some people get cancer and others don’t, but a new study conducted at the University of Vermont suggests that fitness in middle age may lower the likelihood of at lease some cancers later in life. HealthDay reports that researchers studied more than 17,000 men who had a single cardiovascular fitness assessment as part of a preventive health checkup when they were 50, on average. The men, whose fitness was gauged by walking on a treadmill, were categorized into five groups, from lowest fitness level to highest. In a follow-up study 20 to 25 years later, the researchers learned how many and which of them had suffered from lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancer. They found that 2,332 men developed prostate cancer, 276 developed colorectal cancer and 277 developed lung cancer. They also found that the men who had been most fit had a 68 percent lower risk of lung cancer and a 38 percent lower risk of colorectal cancer when compared to the least fit. Prostate cancer risk, curiously, did not decline with increasing fitness, but the risk of death from it did. The researchers found that even a small improvement in fitness helped: a 50-year-old man who increased fitness so he could last three more minutes on the treadmill could reduce cancer death risk by 14 percent and heart disease death risk by 23 percent. Read more from HealthDay.