According to a new study, as little as one or two minutes of vigorous exercise a day could lower your cancer risk. This activity can include power walking, climbing stairs, doing strenuous housework, or playing with the kids, according to Dr. Emmanuel Stamatakis, the lead author of the study in the journal JAMA Oncology.
More than 22,000 people in the UK Biobank, were examined for the research.
Participants reported not regularly exercising in their leisure time, and they wore accelerometers to track their VILPA, or vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity.
The study found that adults who incorporated about 4½ minutes of vigorous activity in short one- or two-minute bouts had more than 30% lower incidence rates of cancer.
Dr. Glenn Gaesser, professor of exercise physiology in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University confirmed that because it was an observational study, researchers could only prove that small bursts of physical activity were associated with lower cancer incidence, not that the exercise directly caused less cancer.
