Can You Beat Breast Cancer with Housework?

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

30 Dec 2006 01:28 PM

A new study is in Great Britain involving the different types of exercise and their beneficial effects has found that doing housework may substantially lower a woman's risk of breast cancer. I admit, my first reaction to reading these study results was - who conducted the study? Men who don't want to clean the house?

Actually, the research included studies that previous examined the link between breast cancer and exercise. Those studies indicated that women needed to exercise 30 to 45 minutes five days a week. This study conducted by the Cancer Research UK that wanted to examine a variety of different activities from leisure to chores and the study indicated the pre-menopausal women spend about 17.7 hours per week on housework and post-menopausal women spent about 16 hours per week on housework.

According to the study, those pre-menopausal women who performed housework 17.7 hours per week were about 30 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than their pre-menopausal counterparts who did none. For the post-menopausal women who performed housework, they were 20 percent less likely to develop breast cancer.

The research was conducted on data from about 220,000 women from various European countries. They followed these women and their activities for a little over 6 years. Of this number, there were about 3400 cases of breast cancer diagnosed.

The results indicated that significant activity, including household chores and housework, contributed to reducing a woman's chances of developing breast cancer. The study also indicated that it's important for men and women to get regular physical exercise in order to help maintain their health. So, the next time you pull out the vacuum and the next time you have to clean the windows - remember, not only are you cleaning your house and providing a more pleasant environment for your family - you are also protecting your own health and providing yourself for your family as time goes on.

Who knew that those annoying chores were good for so much more than we might have thought before?

Related Articles:

Working Out with Cancer

Women's Fitness: National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Breastfeeding Can Reduce Your Risk of Breast Cancer

Obesity & Breast Cancer

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Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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