Sometime around the age of five, I distinctly remember my mother telling me, "You have to play a sport. You can pick any sport you want, but you have to play a sport." I recall this encounter vividly because I really, really didn't want to play sports. At the time, I was the "everything-has-to-be-pink, Barbie-doll-playing, glitter-loving" type. But I picked a sport, soccer, and surprisingly stuck with it through college.
Fast forward to today, when I came across new research touting the health benefits of exercise during adolescence and was compelled to send a "Thanks, mom" text for her fitness mandate. The findings, which were recently published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, show that women who regularly exercised as teenagers had a decreased risk of dying from cancer, cardiovascular disease and other causes during middle-age and later in life.
The study was conducted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Shanghai Cancer Institute and involved the analysis of data from the Shanghai Women’s Health Study, a large ongoing prospective cohort study of 74,941 Chinese women ages 40 to 70.
Researchers defined regular exercise as occurring a minimum of once a week for three consecutive months. Lead author Sarah Nechuta, PhD, said in a release, "In women, adolescent exercise participation, regardless of adult exercise, was associated with reduced risk of cancer and all-cause mortality."
More details about the study results:
Investigators found that participation in exercise both during adolescence and recently as an adult was significantly associated with a 20 percent reduced risk of death from all causes, 17 percent for cardiovascular disease and 13 percent for cancer.
While there have been several studies of the role of weight gain and obesity on overall mortality later in life, the authors believe this is the first cohort study of the impact of exercise during adolescence on later cause-specific and all-cause mortality among women.
The authors note that an important next step is to evaluate the role of adolescent exercise in the incidence of major chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and major cancers, which will also help provide more insight into the mechanisms of disease.
Previously: Study finds teens who play two sports show notably lower obesity rates, Exercise may lower women's risk of dementia later in life, How physical activity influences health and Stanford pediatrician discusses developing effective programs to curtail childhood obesity
Photo by Ole Olson
