Aerobic exercise dramatically reduces your chances of dying from cancer.
High-intensity aerobic exercise reduces your risk of developing metastatic cancer—the type that spreads through the body—by as much as 72 percent.
Energetic exercise feeds off the body’s sugar supplies, which cancer also needs in order to grow and spread, say researchers from Tel Aviv University.
Exercise increases the number of glucose receptors on the lungs, liver and lymph—the organs that are typically targeted by spreading cancer cells—which means they are using up more of the body’s sugar stores.
Prof Carmit Levy, one of the researchers, explained: “If cancer develops, the fierce competition over glucose reduces the availability of energy that is critical for metastasis (cancer spread)”.
But if you have cancer, only high-intensity exercise will stop it spreading. Moderate exercise that helps burn fat may be good to help prevent cancer—and earlier studies have suggested it reduces the risk by around 35 percent—but it won’t stop it spreading once you have it.
Levy and his team analysed data that had tracked around 3,000 people for 20 years and discovered that the incidence of metastatic cancer was 72 percent lower in people who regularly did aerobic exercise at high intensity compared to others who did not exercise at all. They then compared the results against animal studies, which confirmed their findings.
To starve cancer cells of sugar, your normal pulse rate needs to increase by as much as 85 percent. It only has to reach that level for a brief period, however, and can be achieved by sprinting for one minute, and then walking, before sprinting again.
But you shouldn’t wait until you have cancer. Introducing some high-intensity exercise into your daily regime will also help prevent cancer, the researchers say. It’s a much more effective preventative than any medication or medical intervention.
Cancer Research, 2022; 82: 4164-78
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