Exercise May Reduce Prostate-Cancer Risk

Ramp up your fitness regimen to reduce your chance of developing prostate cancer.

That’s the takeaway from a recent Swedish study that found those who were more active than their sedentary counterparts were less likely to develop the disease that killed an estimated 34,700 Americans last year.

Kate Bolam, PhD, and her research team collected and analyzed information from a database containing the results of in-lab fitness and other tests involving more than 57,000 Swedish men between 1982 and 2019. Their findings, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggest that improving cardiorespiratory fitness may reduce the risk of a prostate-cancer diagnosis by as much as 35 percent.

How a more active body becomes less prone to the disease remains something of a mystery, but Neil Iyengar, MD, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (who was not involved in the study), believes exercise improves the immune system’s ability to search out and kill cancer cells.

“We know even a single bout of exercise helps our body release immune cells in our circulation,” he tells the New York Times. “It also helps to improve the population of immune cells in our tissues that fight cancer cells.”

The American Cancer Society recommends engaging in at least 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity exercise, though there’s no consensus among researchers on what type of movement is most effective. By simply finding an activity we enjoy, Bolam says, we can lower the chances that prostate cancer will develop. It is, she notes, “something that is wholly in our control.”

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