Doing housework can reduce breast cancer risk

Research on more than 200,000 women from nine European countries shows that women who do housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer. From BBC:

Out of all of the activities, only housework significantly reduced the risk of both pre- and post-menopausal women getting the disease.

Housework cut breast cancer risk by 30% among the pre-menopausal women and 20% among the post-menopausal women.

The women were studied over an average of 6.4 years, during which time there were 3,423 cases of breast cancer.

The international authors said their results suggested that moderate forms of physical activity, such as housework, may be more important than less frequent but more intense recreational physical activity in reducing breast cancer risk.

Dr Lesley Walker of Cancer Research UK said: "We already know that women who keep a healthy weight are less likely to develop breast cancer.

"This study suggests that being physically active may also help reduce the risk and that something as simple and cheap as doing the housework can help."