Cancer Prevention - Recommendation 2

Recommendation 2:
Be physically active as part of everyday life

Be moderately physically active, equivalent (Can be incorporated in occupational, transport, household, or leisure activities) to brisk walking for at least 30 minutes every day. As fitness improves, aim for 60 minutes or more of moderate, or for 30 minutes or more of vigorous, physical activity every day. This is because physical activity of longer duration or greater intensity is more beneficial.

Limit sedentary habits such as watching television.

Most populations, and people living in industrialised and urban settings, have habitual levels of activity below levels to which humans are adapted. With industrialisation, urbanisation, and mechanisation, populations and people become more sedentary. As with overweight and obesity, sedentary ways of life have been usual in high-income countries since the second half of the 20th century. They are now common if not usual in most countries.

All forms of physical activity protect against some cancers, as well as against weight gain, overweight, and obesity;  correspondingly, sedentary ways of life are a cause of these cancers and of weight gain, overweight, and obesity.

Weight gain, overweight, and obesity are also causes of  some cancers independently of the level of physical activity. 

The Panel is impressed by the overall consistency of the evidence and concludes that relatively high levels of physical activity protect, or may protect, against cancers of  the colon, breast (postmenopause), and endometrium (limited evidence also for pancreas, prostate & premenopausal breast cancer). To prevent these cancers, the overall evidence supports the message that the more physically active people are the better; however, this excludes extreme levels of activity.