Long-Term Benefits of Fitness Fight Cancer

Get off your butt! It could
just save your life!

According to a new report by NBC, fitness is vital to your long-term health. Great, we already knew that. But the protection from cancer that you receive can last up to 20 years down the road, just like we at Envita Medical Clinics have been saying for a long time. Need more reasons to get off the couch? Check out an excerpt of the article below:

Fitness can protect you from cancer -- even 20 or more years down the road, researchers report. And men who were the most fit in middle age were the least likely to die a quarter century later even if they were unlucky enough to get cancer, a new study finds.

Men who were the most fit at age 50 back in the 1970s were the least likely to develop lung or colon cancer 20 to 25 years later, the study, which will be presented next month at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, or ASCO, found. And among the men who did get lung, colon or prostate cancer, the fitter they were in their early 50s, the less likely they were to die of it.

This is good news for people who want to lower their risk of not only heart disease but cancer, says Dr. Susan Lakoski of the University of Vermont, who led the study. She’s a cardiologist who studies fitness and its effect on disease.

“Two things you can’t change are your genes and your age,’ she said. “But you can get more fit.”

Lakoski studied data on more than 17,000 men who attended the Cooper Institute in Dallas. Dr. Kenneth Cooper, who coined the word “aerobics”, founded the research institute in 1970. The men all took fitness tests on their first visits to the institute, and the institute later acquired their medical records.

Read more here.