August 16, 2023 – It is already common knowledge that physical exertion is nice for health. A brand new study of greater than 1 million young men in Sweden has found links between good physical condition and a significantly lower risk of developing cancer.
The research found that men who had high cardiorespiratory fitness as young adults had a lower risk of developing nine kinds of cancer later in life, including cancers of the top, neck, lung, kidney and gastrointestinal tract.
The study was published in British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Cardiorespiratory fitness is a measure of how well an individual's cardiovascular and respiratory systems supply oxygen to the muscles. NBC News wrote.
The researchers followed the Swedish men for a mean of 33 years, starting with a military fitness test on an exercise bike. They then compared these men's cancer rates with the fitness levels present in the military tests.
“They found that the highly fit people had a 19 percent lower risk of head and neck cancer and a 20 percent lower risk of kidney cancer than the lower fit group,” NBC reported. “The risk of lung cancer was 42 percent lower among the fittest participants, although this was largely due to people's smoking habits.”
The likelihood of not developing cancer increases the higher the fitness of the participants, said the lead writer of the study, Dr. Aron Onerup from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
The fitter men had the next risk of developing melanoma and prostate cancer. Onerup said this might be because lively men get more sun and usually tend to be screened for prostate cancer.