Physical Activity - Public Health Impact
This infographic summarizes the findings reported in the manuscript published by Arem, et al. JAMA Internal Medicine 2015.
DCEG investigators have made significant discoveries on the effect of physical activity on cancer risk:
- Reduced risk of colon, breast, endometrial, and ovarian cancers associated with physical activity (Albanes et al., 1989; Chow et al., 1993; Dosemeci et al., 1993; Sturgeon et al., 1993; Zheng et al., 1993).
- Research studies by DCEG cited in the 1996 Surgeon General’s Report on Physical Activity and Health.
- Leisure-time physical activity is associated with longer life expectancy, even at relatively low levels of activity and regardless of body weight, a finding that reinforces U.S. guidelines for physical activity for all Americans (Moore SC, et al., 2012).
- People who engage in three to five times the recommended minimum level of leisure-time physical activity derive the greatest mortality reduction, when compared with people who do not engage in leisure-time physical activity (Arem H, et al., 2015).
- Leisure-time physical activity was associated with lower risks of 13 cancer types; most of these associations were evident regardless of body mass index or smoking history (Moore et al 2016). These findings confirm and extend the evidence for a benefit of physical activity on cancer risk and support its role as a key component of population-wide cancer prevention and control efforts.
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Physical activity throughout adulthood, especially increased leisure-time physical activity later in life, was associated with decreased risk of death in a cohort study of over 300,000 people (Saint-Maurice PF, et al., 2019).