Keep Your Colon Happy

by Leslie Aronson — May 7, 2008

It seems that we're regularly hearing how a specific type of exercise or food can help prevent certain types of cancer or disease. Rather than fall behind the curve, here's another suggestion, presented in a study from Washington University. The May edition of Body + Soul reports that a "study of 79,295 women ages 40 to 65 found that those who exercised at a moderate or vigorous intensity (playing tennis, jogging, or riding a bike, for instance) more than 4 hours weekly had a 44 percent lower colon cancer risk than those who worked out less than an hour each week. Women who walked for about one or two hours a week, meanwhile, were 31 percent less likely to develop colon cancer than those who didn't walk at all. "It's not clear why exercise has this impact, but it's been suggested that perhaps it lowers inflammation in the colon. Or, because exercise speeds up your digestive processes, food has less time to hang out in your intestines, which decreases your colon's potential exposure to carcinogens. Whatever the reasons behind it, the study is further confirmation that you're doing your body a favor by exercising regularly.