2024-02-03 19:12:42
Science Men’s Health
Even a little jogging can protect against prostate cancer
As of: 8:12 p.m. | Reading time: 2 minutes
Cancer risk: Staying active pays off
Source: picture alliance/dpa/Markus Scholz
Prostate cancer is one of the most common tumors of all. But even a small increase in physical fitness could prevent many cancers. A large study by Swedish researchers has now shown for the first time how big the effect is.
Prostate cancer is one of the most common tumors in men – but it can possibly be prevented through physical fitness. This emerges from a comprehensive analysis that a Swedish research team has now presented. It is the first study ever to clearly demonstrate that cardiopulmonary fitness has a protective effect on the development of prostate cancer.
The team led by Kate Bolam from the “Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences GIH” in Stockholm included almost 60,000 men in the study. The study participants’ cardio-respiratory endurance was measured on a bicycle ergometer as part of health checks carried out by their employers. Bolam and colleagues linked this information with data from the Swedish national disease registries and analyzed the development of prostate cancer over an average period of almost seven years. The researchers present the results in “British Journal of Sports Medicine“.
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According to this, the training level of many men remained at most the same over time or even decreased. But some of them were able to improve their fitness – and these were also significantly less likely to develop prostate cancer. The risk of cancer fell by a third if the test subjects were able to increase their maximum oxygen intake by just three percent between two health checks.
This is also notable because – unlike breast, colon or lung cancer – with prostate cancer it was not yet clear whether and to what extent the risk of the disease can be reduced through one’s own behavior. The study now suggests that even a comparatively small amount of physical training can pay off considerably.
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However, there was only evidence of a lower incidence of prostate cancer among fitter men, but not a lower mortality from the disease. This could simply be because of all the study participants, only 46 died of prostate cancer during the (very short) observation period: the number is too small to be able to reliably demonstrate statistical differences between the different fitness levels.
In any case, men should be encouraged to exercise in middle age, argue the study authors. Since regular exercise also has numerous other positive health effects and protects against cardiovascular diseases, for example, there are actually several advantages to being – and staying – physically active.
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