Exercise During Teen Years Linked to Better Health Later in Life

Exercising and playing team sports as a teenager can have long-lasting benefits for women, a new study shows.

In fact, exercising during adolescence may even reduce the risk of dying from cancer and other causes later in life.

A large study, which included about 75,000 women in China, has found that women who exercised up to 80 minutes weekly as adolescents had a 16 percent lower risk of death from cancer and a 15 percent lower risk of dying from any causes.

Exercising for 1.3 hours a week had a positive impact, according to the study, published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Even greater benefits were seen for women who continued to exercise as adults — they enjoyed a 20 percent lower risk for death from all causes.

“Our results support the importance of promoting exercise participation in adolescence to reduce mortality in later life and highlight the critical need for the initiation of disease prevention early in life,” said Sarah J. Nechuta, MPH, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Although the study shows an association between exercise and a lower risk for death, it does not prove that exercising leads to lower mortality, researchers said. Further studies are needed.

The research adds to an ever-growing list of potential benefits for exercise. Not only can playing sports help children build their confidence and improve their self esteem, but exercise may also improve school performance and help teens maintain a healthy weight.

Nechuta noted that “understanding the long-term impact of modifiable lifestyle factors such as exercise in adolescence is of critical importance and can have substantial public health implications for disease prevention over the course of life.”

Source: American Association for Cancer Research

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