Researchers also found exercising seven hours or more a week boosted chances of living longer
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, Dec. 8, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Watching too much television may lower your chances of survival after colon cancer, new research suggests.
"The take-away message from our study is that both minimizing TV viewing, to less than two hours per day, and increasing exercise, to four-plus hours per week, were associated with lower mortality risk among colorectal cancer survivors," explained study author Hannah Arem, a postdoctoral fellow with the U.S. National Cancer Institute's nutritional epidemiological branch.
While the study showed an association between television watching, exercising and survival odds among colon cancer patients, it did not prove a cause-and-effect link.
Arem and her colleagues report their findings online Dec. 8 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
To explore the impact of lifestyle on colon cancer survival, the study authors sifted through data that had been collected by the U.S. National Institutes of Health for an earlier study.
The initial investigation had included more than 566,000 men and women between the ages of 50 and 71, all of whom had completed an initial health and lifestyle questionnaire at some point between 1995 and 1996.
All were asked to indicate the degree to which they had routinely participated in moderate to vigorous "leisure-time activity" on a weekly basis over the past decade. Activities included swimming, biking, golf, tennis, dancing, fast-walking, jogging, aerobic exercise and/or heavy gardening.
The new analysis honed in on the nearly 3,800 participants who went on to be diagnosed with colon cancer. On average, the diagnoses had occurred approximately five years following completion of the initial survey.
By stacking pre-diagnosis exercise habits up against cancer survival information, the researchers determined that colon cancer patients who had seven or more hours of weekly leisure activity before their diagnosis showed a 20 percent lower risk of dying -- for any reason -- than those who had engaged in no leisure activity whatsoever.
And after analyzing a follow-up survey completed between 2004 and 2005 by roughly 1,800 of the original 3,800 colon cancer patients, the team found that those who engaged in seven or more hours of weekly leisure activity post-diagnosis faced a 31 percent lower risk of dying from any cause, regardless of their activity levels before diagnosis.
source : Too Much TV Time May Lower Survival Odds After Colon Cancer, Study Suggests
