‘I want to keep mobile’ is probably the most common goal that our patients set for themselves, when we are doing their annual review.
Most of us think that exercise helps to prevent us from suffering from heart attacks and strokes. However, a recent article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (1) has demonstrated that doing more exercise helps to reduce the incidence of cancer. “Surely a statistical quirk of a small study” I hear you say. Definitely not! This study uses data from the recent BioBank study and involved 85,394 patients, with an average age of 63yrs.
The study shows that just one hour of exercise reduces our cancer risk. Increasing our step count also reduces our cancer risk. The more steps that we do, the lower our cancer risk, with this inverse relationship plateauing at about 9000 steps per day.
But surely you can overdo it? Well, it seems not. Another study (2) in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has shown that athletes who were able to run a sub four-minute mile had an increased life expectancy compared to the general population. Whether this is cause or effect remains to be seen, but it certainly seems that high-performance athletes on the whole have a greater life expectancy. We can learn something from them!
I wonder what goals you will set in your next annual review?
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