Good cardiorespiratory health leads to solving most of the problems, including cancer. The more a person is a fitness freak, there are chances that not only his/her heart health remains stable for a longer duration, but there would be a lower risk of cancer diagnosis in that individual.
Yes, it is true! Your fitness activity could prove to help you save yourself from a disease that has been taking lives since long back. Cancer treatments are taking their progressive speed, but there isn’t yet any definite cure to protect an affected person from dying. At arriving at the last stage, the disease almost becomes even sicker.
An excellent physical fitness routine isn’t only necessary for good heart health but a good flow of blood and better flexibility of the body. People are mostly fascinated with the idea of hitting the gym and performing their daily exercises, but the gym isn’t the only place to keep you on your toes and tone your body and help your organs work in a better way.
A group of researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore performed the most extensive research according to them, which was finding the strength of association between cardiorespiratory fitness and lung or colorectal cancer. The researchers tried to develop a theory about the higher level of fitness that could lead to better survival chances even before the diagnosis of cancer
Details about the Research & The Understanding
The researchers compiled and collected data on 49,143 health system patients, and these were those patients who had already undergone an exercise stress test of fitness. The group contained 46% females, 64%, 29%, and the other 1% was Hispanic.
The range of different cultural individuals helped in understanding how it universally affects reducing cancer risk. The first study author and assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Dr. Catherine Handy Marshall, claimed that their study was the first to involve women in such a large proportion.
The researchers based their research on assessing the cardiorespiratory fitness in metabolic equivalents of task (METs) in people from the age group of 40-70 years. Further, the research scholars divided these people into several group on their level r MET score; 6 METs and below, 6-9 METs, 10-11 METs & the last category was 2 METs and over that.
The MET scores indicated the level of pf physical activity in people. The conclusion was that people with 12 or more MET were at a 77% lower risk of being diagnosed with cancer and 61% lower risk of colorectal cancer. The extraneous factors such as sex, smoking and drinking habit, weight, use of aspirin, or statin needed adjustment so that the conclusion doesn’t change anyway.
A regular regimen into physical activity could pave an objective way of assessing an individual’s health conditions and providing a better measure for a disease like cancer. Dr. Catherine Marshall, the first author of the study, states that,
There is a “convincing evidence” that moderate and high levels of fitness can reduce men and women’s risk of death from all causes and cardiovascular causes. But a little more study and evidence lacks to fully comprehend their relationship in terms of saving more numver of people.
What are the chances of survival with better Physical Fitness?
The ACS (American Cancer Society) believes colorectal is the level third most common cause of death due to cancer. The statistics are shocking for almost all nations around the world. For the first time, a theory led to an establishment where better cardiorespiratory fitness could increase the days of living for a cancer-infected person.
The research mentioned above, although involved in a group that belonged to the US, the experts rightly pointed to an understanding that the present times indicate about half a million population in the US being diagnosed with lung and colorectal cancer. In a country like India, it is 1 million annually.
Dr. Catherine Handy Marshall said that,
This larger study perfromed spoke of a blurred association of higher level of cardiorespiratory fitness with a lower risk of incident lung and colorectal cancer in men and women, and a lower risk of all‐cause mortality among those diagnosed with lung or colorectal cancer.
Dr. Marshall believes that her team requires a much closer observation of this relationship studies to establish this fact.
The present analysis and design of the research aren’t complete. The research team needs much more in-depth analysis to consider that physical fitness can help overcome cancer risk in individuals globally.
