Prevention of Cancer: What Counts as “Exercise?”

You’ve got a very busy life! Between the housework, grocery shopping, gardening and yard work, playing with the kids, taking the dog for a walk, washing your car, and even volunteer work on weekends, your life has all the exercise it needs, right?

Wrong. As fulfilling and active as your life is, your busy activities can’t be classified as the “exercise” needed to help prevent cancer.

Your Muscles: They’re Not Just for Showing Off at the Beach!

Did you know that a major risk factor for cancer is the shrinking and weakening of your muscles? That’s because your muscular system’s strength is interconnected with your immune system’s strength. Muscles are the storage sites for the proteins needed to produce anti-bodies, white blood cells, as well as cells that detect and destroy lethal cancer cells.

Unfortunately, there’s just not a lot of muscle training going on in our busy, activity-filled lives. As people living in a modern world filled with countless technologies designed to help us not use our muscles in the way that our ancestors did, it’s no wonder why cancer is such a leading cause of death.

How You Can Prevent Cancer in Just 12 to 15 Minutes
Since strengthening our muscles doesn’t come naturally in our technologically-advanced world, it’s vitally important to engage in a strength-training workout every week. But don’t worry! You don’t have to camp out at the gym all day to give your muscles the cancer-fighting workout they need. In fact, if you’ve got 12 to 15 minutes to do some slow weight training, just once or twice a week, you’ve got time to invest in your health.

Here’s one example of a slow weight training workout program that uses five basic compound movements:

1. Pull-down (or alternatively chin-up)

2. Chest press
3. Compound row (A pulling motion in the horizontal plane) 4. Overhead press
5. Leg press or squat

You can do these exercises using either free weights or machines, but using a resistance training machine has the benefit of letting you focus on the effort instead of on your movement. Use enough weight to do between 8 and 12 repetitions. (If you can do more than 12, add some weight.)

For each repetition, lift the weight slowly and gradually – making sure it takes about four seconds to bring the weight all the way up. Then bring the weight down in the same way, using a four-second count. When pushing, such as when doing chest or leg presses, be sure to stop about 10 to 15 degrees before your limbs are fully straightened, and then smoothly reverse direction.

Put a Damper on Cancer – Not Your Lifestyle

There you have it! Although your normal, daily activities don’t provide the exercise you need to fight cancer, you now have a workout plan that does. And the best part is that you’ll still have plenty of time for all of life’s activities.

With such a quick and easy program, why not start today? Who knows, you might even enjoy sculpting and toning your muscles so much that you’ll find yourself going to the gym three or four times a week, rather than once or twice.