A more active lifestyle can reduce the risk of obesity-related cancers by almost half.
University researchers establish an index that relates greater physical activity and a lesser sedentary lifestyle with a leave incidence of cancers such as colon, breast, pancreatic or kidney cancer.
FotoManuelCastells/Dr. Miguel Ángel Martínez, Maira Bes, Estefanía Toledo, Maite Bastyr-Diego and María Barbería, researchers who developed the study.
21 | 10 | 2025
A study published in the journal Preventive Medicine shows that increased adherence to an active lifestyle can nearly halve the risk of developing obesity-related cancers. These cancers include esophageal adenocarcinoma, postmenopausal breast cancer, cancers of the colon and rectum, uterus, stomach, kidney, liver, biliary tract, ovary, pancreas, thyroid, meningioma and multiple myeloma.
The research is part of the SUN (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra) project , a cohort of volunteers initiated in 1999 that follows thousands of Spanish university graduates through questionnaires every two years. For this work, the scientists analyzed data from 19,651 volunteers, with an average follow-up of 13 years, who had been diagnosed with 274 new cases of obesity-related cancer.
"Physical activity and sedentary lifestyle were evaluated with a questionnaire validated in the Spanish population, which collected information on 17 types of physical activity and sports practiced. An active lifestyle index was calculated with eight indicators, such as exercise time, walking speed, floors of stairs climbed or daily hours in front of the TV screen," explains Dr. Estefanía Toledo, professor in the department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra and researcher at IdiSNA and CIBEROBN. With this index, the experts elaborated a scale of 0 to 8 points, classifying the participants in groups of active lifestyle in 3 categories: leave, average or high physical activity.
"The results are clear: people with a more active lifestyle (medium-low, medium-high and medium) showed a reduction of almost 50% in the incidence of these cancers compared to those with a more sedentary lifestyle," Dr. Toledo explains. In statistical terms, for each additional point in the active lifestyle index, the risk was reduced by a relative 12%. In addition, the risk of developing obesity-related cancers in those at the highest level of leisure-time physical activity was 46% lower than in those at the lowest level.
Moving more and sitting less as a maxim for better health
"An interesting finding is that meeting the World Health Organization's minimum recommendations (150 minutes per week of moderate physical activity or 75 of intense activity) did not show a significant reduction in risk. This suggests that, rather than meeting a threshold, it is the combination of moving more and sitting less that makes the difference," adds Dr. Maite Bastyr-Diego, first author of the publication and a specialist in Family and Community Medicine at the Navarra Health Service.
For Bastyr-Diego, the study provides robust evidence thanks to its prospective design , the long duration of follow-up and the medical confirmation of the diagnoses. Although he cautions that the sample of Spanish university students with generally healthy lifestyles-may limit generalizability to the entire population. "The results support the need for public health policies that integrate the reduction of sedentary lifestyles together with the promotion of exercise," he concludes.
