Researchers at Yale University report that women who exercise after receiving a breast cancer diagnosis increase their chance of surviving the disease by over 30 percent.
The survival advantage applies even to women who began exercising for the first time after their diagnosis, the researchers found.
“Anything is better than nothing,” said Dr. Melinda L. Irwin of the Yale School of Medicine during an interview with Reuters.
“We actually observed benefits with just doing a little bit of exercise,” said Irwin, one of the researchers involved in the study.
Previous studies over the past 20 years have shown that exercise can cut the risk of breast cancer by up to 40 percent. However, recent research indicates that exercise has an equal or greater impact on survival rates among women with breast cancer.
In the current study, Irwin and her team examined 933 women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 1995 and 1998. The women were followed through 2004 to help researchers better understand the amount and timing of physical activity required to improve survival.
They discovered that women who exercised the equivalent of two to three hours of brisk walking per week in the year prior to their breast cancer diagnosis were 31 percent less likely to die of the disease than those who were sedentary before their diagnosis.
Two years after diagnosis, those who engaged in any amount of exercise had a 64 percent lower risk of dying than women who were inactive at that time. Women who got at least two to three hours of brisk walking each week reduced their risk of death by 67 percent, the researchers found.
The results further showed that women who decreased their physical activity after diagnosis increased their risk of dying from breast cancer by a factor of four compared with those who were sedentary and remained so. And inactive who began exercising after diagnosis reduced their risk of death by 45 percent.
Irwin said that women undergoing treatment for breast cancer treatment should view exercise as part of their therapy, even if it means beginning with only a 15-minute walk every other day.
“Hopefully this study shows what a major benefit exercise can be,” Irwin said.
In addition to its survival benefits, exercise may also help with the increased risk of cardiovascular disease that may accompany treatment, Irwin said, along with improving a woman’s quality of life.
The research was published in the August 20, 2008 Journal of Clinical Oncology.
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