Avoiding Cancer

Although it is not conclusive that exercise can reduce the risks of getting cancer, it is certainly true that maintaining a normal weight and leading a healthy lifestyle can lower your chances of having cancer.

It is definitive that physically active men and women have around a forty to fifty percent less likely chance to develop colon cancer. The thought behind this is that physical activity allows your colon to process food and waste products more quickly, therefore allowing your colon less exposure to cancer-causing substances.

Breast cancer risks can be reduced as well with physical activity. However, the evidence is not as conclusive as it is for colon cancer. Active women have a thirty to forty percent less likely chance to develop breast cancer, because physical activity decreases a woman's exposure to estrogen. (In men, exercise can reduce testosterone exposure which allows for a lower chance of gaining prostate cancer.)

Some other benefits to exercise are as follows:

• boosting your immune system
• decreasing the amount of insulin circulating in your blood
• reducing levels of other hormones (excluding estrogen and testosterone)
• losing weight