The Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health’s Dr John Mitchell, Senior Research Fellow, spoke on BBC Radio 4’s World at One to talk through some of the findings and impact of a study he has led which focused on which changes to our daily movement behaviours could reduce cancer risk, beyond just exercise…
Funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and co-designed with the PPIE ‘Real Life, Real Movement’ panel, the study involved a large sample of around 60,000 UK adults, most of whom were in their 60s, and followed them for approximately eight years.
Participants wore an accelerometer, similar to a smartwatch, for one week to measure how they spent their time across the full 24-hour day.
They examined whether time spent sleeping, sitting, standing, and moving at different intensities was associated with the risk of developing cancer at 13 relevant sites.
There were 3 key takeaways:
1. Moving more at any intensity was beneficial, with replacing sitting or sleeping with movement associated with a lower risk of cancer.
2. More vigorous activity appeared particularly important. Although participants typically accumulated only around 3–5 minutes per day, these brief periods appeared to be especially beneficial.
3. The study also found novel evidence suggesting that standing instead of sitting or sleeping may be beneficial, particularly for people who are less able to be physically active, although further research is needed to confirm this finding.
This work is published open access in BMC Medicine.
This study involved a dedicated team of researchers: Nicholas Koemel, ISEH’s Jo Blodgett, Raaj Kishore Biswas and Matthew Ahmadi – a collaboration between University College London and Monash University, Melbourne.
