Exercise In Older Women Linked With Lower Breast Cancer Risk

Washington, DC (AHN) – A recent report from federal health researchers in the United States recommends rigorous exercise for postmenopausal women to reduce their risk of developing breast cancer.

Dr. Tricia Peters with the U.S. National Cancer Institute, who lead an international team of researchers for the study, said in a statement that this was the first comprehensive look at the importance of various intensities of exercise at different stages in a person’s life as it relates to cancer risk.

More than 110,000 postmenopausal women were asked to rate their level of physical activity at ages 15-18, 19-29, 35-39 and in the past 10 years.

After a follow-up of about seven years, the researchers said that women who exercised more than seven hours a week at a moderate- to vigorous rate for the last 10 years were 16 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than their inactive peers. The researchers said they found no link between breast cancer risk and physical activity in active women at a younger age.

The study is published in the BioMed Central journal BMC Cancer.

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