Engaging in physical activity can reduce your chances of developing the most common kind of bowel cancer by a quarter, according to new research published in the British Journal of Cancer.
A team of US scientists reviewed the results of 52 previous studies on exercise and colon cancer risk to make the most comprehensive calculation yet of the effect that physical activity has on both men and womens risk of developing colon cancer.
Overall, they found that the most active people are 24 per cent less likely to develop the disease than the least active people. Colon cancer is the most common form of bowel cancer, which is the third most common form of cancer, affecting more than 36,500 people a year in the UK.
The study took into account many different types of physical activity including occupational activity like manual labour, as well as more traditional leisure-time activity such as running or going to the gym. These studies used different methods to quantify the amounts of exercise people took. One study for instance considered the most active people to be those who walked briskly for five to six hours a week in comparison to those who walked for 30 minutes a week or less.
Study author, Dr Kathleen Wolin, from the'Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said: "These results give us a very reliable calculation of the positive effect that exercise can have on reducing colon cancer risk. It's very positive to see that exercise has such a clear benefit in reducing cancer risk and we hope it will encourage people to enjoy a healthy active lifestyle as well as treating it as a way to minimise their colon cancer risk.