Overweight older women can reduce unhealthy estrogen levels through exercise and lower risk of breast cancer

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 20 Apr 2004 - 0:00 PST


A New study has found that overweight older women can reduce unhealthy estrogen levels through exercise, thus reducing their risk of developing breast cancer.

Fat cells are the main source of estrogen in menopausal women. Inactive older women and women with high estrogen levels have a higher risk of developing breast cancer. This is according to Dr. Anne McTiernan, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA. Anne McTiernan was also team leader in this study.

The researchers wanted to see whether a moderate exercise schedule would lower estrogen levels. You can read about the study in the journal Cancer Research.

The study included 175 overweight women aged 50-75. Some of them were randomly chosen to do moderate exercise while the others had to do stretching only exercises. Both groups had to do this for three hours a week.

Three months later they were examined for levels of three different kinds of estrogen. The women who had been doing moderate exercise had experienced a fall in estrogen levels (in all three types of estrogen). Those in the stretching group experienced no change in their estrogen levels.

A year later the two groups were examined again. Women from the exercise group who had lost 2% of their body fat or more, had even lower levels of estrogen than after three months. The women in the stretching group, on the other hand, had slight increases in their estrogen levels.

The researchers said the exercise had the same effect as going on a low-fat diet. They said that the effect of the exercise might be even greater than a low-fat diet's.

As well as lowering excessively high estrogen levels, exercise also protects the older woman from heart disease and osteoporosis.

• Additional
• References
• Citations