Walking and brisk walking are excellent types of physical exercises which can be recommended to all, from children to the elderly. There are numerous health benefits of walking, including reduced risks of many serious health conditions, toned and improved function of all systems and organs, lower risks of premature death and improved psychological health. The links between walking or brisk walking and some types of cancer have been known before. In particular, reduced risks of prostate cancer in men are considered among the most important benefits of brisk walking. Choosing walking for cancer risk reduction is a very good idea, and an increasing number of studies are proving that this type of physical activities can work really great for breast cancer prevention.
Thus, according to the findings of a recent study, those women who use walking for about 90 minutes every day can substantially decrease their breast cancer risk. A group of scientists from the University of North Carolina claim that walking for as much as 10-18 hours a week, including household chores and other activities involving walking, can play a significant role in breast cancer prevention and reduce breast cancer risk by almost 30 per cent. As the studies by the scientists have shown, regular walking or brisk walking for cancer prevention assists in slowing down fatty tissues formation that plays a role in blocking cancerous tissues formation and providing effective breast cancer risk reduction.
The findings were received after analyzing the data on over 3,000 American women aged between 20 and 98, at that about a half of the participants were diagnosed with breast cancer. All women were asked to answer detailed questions about their weekly physical exercises and daily chores. In particular, there were asked how much time they usually spend doing exercises like walking, cycling or jogging every day. 
It turned out that those women who reported about doing up to 19 hours exercises a week had breast cancer risk reduced by almost 30 per cent. It means that doing from one and a half to three hours of exercises a day, including daily chores and all kinds of physical activities, can work very well for breast cancer prevention in modern women.
It is interesting that the findings of the study totally correspond to the current recommendations of the Department of Health which are two and a half hour of physical exercises a day. According to Lauren McCullough, one of the study leaders and M.S.P.H at the University of North Carolina, one of the most important factor that became apparent after the study is making women understand that they do not have to visit gym or looking for extra time for their daily physical exercises to rip the mentioned benefits and decrease breast cancer risk. Doing plenty of physical activities as their daily chores, house reconstruction, hobbies, and so on can assist perfectly great for breast cancer prevention. ‘The take-home message here is that it doesn’t need to be intense exercise. You don’t need to be a marathon runner or jog on the treadmill everyday,” McCullough said.
The researchers underline that the findings published this summer in the journal Cancer, the effects of walking for cancer prevention should be accounted to another important breast cancer risk factor: body weight. It is said that if a women puts on weight despite of doing plenty of physical activities, she can not benefit from the mentioned breast cancer risk reducing properties of walking. They say that weight gain is linked to increased hormone production which encourage cancer cells formation. Previous studies, including the one of Oxford university experts, have proven that increased hormone production is linked to higher breast cancer risks. Read more about the issue and the findings about breast cancer prevention in this report.
Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.
