Swapping a few minutes of sedentary lifestyle for movement can make a difference to your health. A study published in the scientific journal BMC Medicine found an association between physical activity, even for very short periods, and a lower risk of a group of 13 types of cancer related to physical inactivity.
Simple habit can bring benefits against 13 types of cancer
Swapping a few minutes of sedentary lifestyle for movement can make a difference to your health. A study published in the scientific journal BMC Medicine found an association between physical activity, even for very short periods, and a...
Among the possibilities analyzed by the researchers, vigorous activity showed the strongest association. Just three additional minutes per day, instead of periods of less intensity, sleep or sedentary behavior, were related to an approximately 4% reduction in risk for the group of cancers studied.
- Activities such as quickly climbing stairs, running to catch a bus or carrying heavy bags can fall into this category.
- The result does not mean that three minutes of exercise is enough to prevent cancer.
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Among the possibilities analyzed by the researchers, vigorous activity showed the strongest association. Just three additional minutes per day, instead of periods of less intensity, sleep or sedentary behavior, were related to an approximately 4% reduction in risk for the group of cancers studied. Activities such as quickly climbing stairs, running to catch a bus or carrying heavy bags can fall into this category.
The result does not mean that three minutes of exercise is enough to prevent cancer. The work is observational and used statistical models to estimate associations between different ways of distributing the 24 hours of the day. The authors themselves state that further research is needed to confirm the effects of specific changes in behavior over time.
How the study was carried out
Scientists analyzed data from 59,218 participants from the UK Biobank, the United Kingdom's health information bank. The average age was 61.7 years, and 55% of the sample was made up of women. Movements were recorded by wrist-worn devices and participants were followed for a median of eight years. During this period, 2,385 cases of cancer were identified and included in the analysis.
The researchers assessed how much time each person spent sleeping, sitting, standing or moving. They also separated activities according to intensity, classifying them as light, moderate or vigorous.
The study considered a set of 13 cancers previously associated with physical activity: bladder, colon, endometrium, gastric cardia, head and neck, kidney, liver, breast, lung and rectum, as well as myeloma, esophageal adenocarcinoma and myeloid leukemia.
More movement was associated with lower risk
It wasn't just intense activities that showed positive results. Replacing 15 minutes of sleep or sedentary behavior with 15 minutes of movement of any intensity was associated with about a 2% reduction in cancer risk.
Standing longer also showed a favorable association, although a longer period was needed to achieve a similar result. According to calculations, approximately 30 minutes of standing instead of sitting or sleeping produced a reduction comparable to that obtained with 15 minutes of movement.
In the opposite direction, replacing 30 minutes of movement with half an hour of sedentary behavior was linked to an 8% higher risk of cancer.
The researchers also observed that intensity seems to have relevant weight. In the statistical model, three minutes of vigorous activity showed an association with risk reduction similar to that seen with much longer periods of light activity alone.
The authors reinforce, however, that the numbers should not be interpreted as an individual recipe for prevention. Cancer has many causes and risk factors, and the associations also varied between different types of the disease. In the case of breast cancer, for example, the specific analysis did not find a significant association.
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The drug amivantamab, administered by an injection under the skin, shrank tumors in 43 of 102 patients evaluated in the OrigAMI-4 clinical trial. In 15 participants, the tumors disappeared completely during the scans, while another 28 showed a partial response.
The research involved 55 hospitals in 11 countries and included people whose cancer had continued to progress even after immunotherapy and platinum-based chemotherapy. The results were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Amivantamab is not a vaccine. It is a bispecific monoclonal antibody that acts on the EGFR and MET proteins, related to the growth and resistance of tumor cells, and also stimulates the immune system's action against the tumor.
According to the Institute of Cancer Research, London, the results justify further studies with the drug. A phase 3 clinical trial is underway to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment in a larger population before its use can be considered for this indication more broadly.
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