Exercise and Sleep Help Women Fight Cancer

Boston – A recent study has shown that women who exercise regularly and get a full eight hours of sleep each night helps to bring down the risk of getting cancer.

Lisa Nemcheck, a breast cancer survivor says that she has come to know that exercise and sleep is helping her remain cancer free. She says, “I recently joined a gym. I started swimming, and I exercise five times a week. I listen to my body, and my body tells me that I do have to rest.”

It has been discovered that regular exercise can help to bring down the risk of cancer in women by 20 percent in a study done by the National Cancer Institue. The fact that exercise has many positive effects on your body such as body weight, immune system functions and hormone functions makes researchers believe that exercise is extremely helpful in reducing the risk of cancer even though there hasn’t been an association between exercise and cancer that has been proven.

Dr. Susan Boolbol says, “This is one of the first studies that has shown that in women who do not have a history of breast cancer, they can actually reduce their risk by exercising.”

Research also shows that even if a women exercises it won’t help unless she gets a full nights sleep also. Sleeping and exercising go hand in hand. Without the proper amount of sleep the exercise doesn’t really matter when reducing cancer risk because it fights the benefits of the exercise. It has been shown that inadequate sleep can actually increase the risk of cancer by 50 percent.

The research, led by James McClain, Ph.D., cancer prevention fellow at the National Cancer Institute, followed 5,968 women in Maryland, aged 18 and over, for about 10 years.

“We think it’s quite interesting and intriguing. It’s kind of a first look into this. It isn’t something that has been widely studied,” explained  McClain.

More research needs to be done to find the correlation between sleep, exercise and the risk of cancer but Ms. Nemcheck says that she is willing to take these steps to help her in staying cancer free.

Dr. Susan Boolbol of Beth Israel Medical Center says, “There are certain things that we can alter in our lifestyle and, hopefully, reduce our risk of developing cancer.”

So in the midst of the continuing research start a regular exercise routine with at least 8 hours of sleep each night to stay healthy and lower your chances of getting cancer. Anything to help us stay healthy is worth the effort.