You do not need to run a marathon to get
benefit from exercise
you just need to find an activity you enjoy doing!
![Text Box: EXERCISE CAN IMPROVE BREAST CANCER SURVIVAL
Just A few hours a week is enough to make a difference
A few hours of walking or other exercise each week may help breast cancer survivors live longer, new research suggests. In a study of nearly 3,000 women, those who exercised this amount were less likely to die of their breast cancer than women who got less than 1 hour of physical activity each week. This could give women another way to boost their odds of beating breast cancer, experts said.
“Women with breast cancer have little to lose and much to gain from exercise,” said the study’s lead author Michelle Holmes, MD, Dr PH, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “We already know that [breast cancer patients who exercise] have better mood, better body image, and better self-esteem. We know it fights other diseases that women with breast cancer can also get, like heart disease and diabetes. And it may also help these women avoid dying from breast cancer.”
Holmes and her colleagues published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 293, N0. 20:2479-2486).
All of the women involved in the study had been treated with standard therapies like surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and tamoxifen. Activities included walking, hiking, jogging, or running, as well as cycling, swimming laps, tennis, aerobics, squash, racquetball, or using a rowing machine.
Women who exercised the equivalent of walking about 1 hour a week, at a 2-3 mile-per-hour pace, had a lower risk of dying from breast cancer than women who got less than an hour’s worth of physical activity each week. Women who did a little more than that – the equivalent of walking about 3-5 hours per week at that pace – had the lowest risk of dying form breast cancer. Women who got more exercise than that also had a lower risk of dying, but not as low as women in the middle group.
“The benefit seemed to level off,” Homes said, “so the good news is women don’t have to run marathons to get the maximum benefit.” The benefit was about the same for women who were past menopause and those who had not yet reached](image036.gif)
