suggest that even short periods of intense, intermittent physical activity are associated with a lower risk for cancer. This activity could be a promising measure for cancer prevention in people who otherwise find it difficult to exercise regularly.
Using data gathered from wearable arm trackers, the researchers analyzed the physical activity of 22,398 people with an average age of 62 years from the UK Biobank. Of these participants, 54.8% were women. After a median follow-up of 6.7 years, corresponding to 149,650 person years, they determined the general cancer incidence rate in this cohort and the incidence rate of 13 kinds of cancer associated with minimal physical activity .
For example, the lowest dose of intense, intermittent physical activity of up to 1 minute was generally 3.4 minutes per day for cancer in general and 3.7 minutes per day for cancer associated with minimal activity . Only at the end of 2022 did the data from Stamatakis and his colleagues suggest a correlation between a little more than 4 minutes of intense physical activity per day and a lower risk for cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and overall mortality in athletes and nonathletes.The authors of the recent study used an existing cohort’s activity data from an earlier substudy of the UK Biobank that measured acceleration in the wrist.