Women Should Sleep More To Avoid Cancer: Study
New York – We all have heard that getting eight hours of sleep is beneficial to one’s health. We all have also heard that exercise can do wonders.
New studies are now showing that regular exercise combined with an adequate sleep regimen may somehow decrease a woman’s chance of cancer.
Led by James McClain of the National Cancer Institute, researchers say that practicing regular physical activity can significantly reduce the risk of cancer among women, but there’s a catch.
For the study, which was presented at a conference of the American Association for Cancer Research, McClain followed 5,968 women in Maryland, aged 18 and over, for about 10 years.
Findings suggest that women who reported getting about an hour a day of moderate physical activity — cancer was 47% rarer for those who got at least seven hours of nightly sleep. Thus, McClain and colleagues believe that physical activity and sleep play an important role in reducing cancer risk. Those findings held regardless of other cancer risk factors.
“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 the study’s principal author, James McClain, a specialist in prevention, the National Cancer Institute, in United States.
Another study released earlier this month, suggested that women who regularly sleep less than 6 hours or less at night, may be increasing the risk of getting breast cancer by more than 60%.
The study, conducted by a team from the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan, was published in the academic journal British Journal of Cancer.
The benefits of regular exercise are endless. It is already well documented that exercise helps people manage a number of common health conditions. Exercising at a moderate level for just 30 minutes a day can control or possibly even eliminate high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease problems. Regular exercise is also often thought of as a natural means to elevate one’s mood. Most people are aware of the “runner’s high” that runner’s supposedly get. This is because exercise releases endorphins and other brain chemicals that relieve stress and induce a state of relaxation. Exercise is certainly beneficial regardless of its role in reducing cancer; however, it has not proven to reduce any forms of cancer when studied alone. Exercise must be combined with adequate rest.
The human body must get adequate rest. Our organs, the heart especially, are trained to function at full speed during waking hours. If we choose not to rest or sleep for an adequate amount of time, our organs to do get a chance to have that required rest. In the studies that are active at this time, researchers are finding that women that average less than seven hours of sleep a night are almost twice as likely to get cancer when compared to those women that are achieving a full eight hours of sleep each night. The exact reason the sleep and exercise combination is reducing cancer risks is unknown at this time.
Some ways to get daily exercise in is to park one’s vehicle farther in a parking lot instead of always searching for the closest one. Take stairs instead of elevators when available. Walk. Walking is probably one of the best forms of exercise as it is one that people can do at their own pace and increase as their strength and endurance builds Sleep is a little harder to come for some. The room in which you sleep in should be one that is comfortable and it should only be used for sleep. Try to find a bedtime routine that sets the body in bedtime mood.
No matter what, sleep and exercise are going to benefit both mind and body.
I think that exercise and sleep make you feel better and that is enough of a reason to get the maximum of both. Keeping you from getting cancer to me is a stretch. I have seen too much evidence of people getting both still getting cancer.