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Watch VideoDr. John discusses ways to protect women from breast cancer
Story By: Dr. John
Source: KOAA
If you want to protect yourself from breast cancer start exercising, but if you want to protect your daughter from it, get her off the couch now.
We are finding out that exercising now pays off big later, especially when it comes to our kids and breast cancer.
Breast cancer is still one of the biggest killers in women. Last year over 200,000 women were newly diagnosed with breast cancer and over 40,000 died from it. So finding ways to prevent it is very important. And now we are finding that the earlier someone starts to exercise the better off they are.
Researchers tracked nearly 65,000 women aged 24 to 42 to see how much they exercised going all the way back to when they were as young as 12. They compared this to how many of the women developed pre-menopausal breast cancer. This type of cancer occurs before menopause and tends to be aggressive.
They found that those exercising at the youngest ages, down to 12 years old, did better at staving off breast cancer later in life. And the biggest impact exercising had was for those 12 to 22. In other words, exercising when a girl is twelve can protect her from breast cancer when she's in her forties and probably even fifties.
But we aren't talking about extreme sports here. 3 hours and 15 minutes of running or other vigorous activity "per week", or 13 hours of walking did the trick.
So the key is to get kids, especially girls, off the couch and off the computer and outside exercising to help them have a healthy life later on.
