Swimming can prevent and treat cancer?

Can swimming prevent and treat cancer? Based on statistics, cancer is the second largest cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease. In the year 2006, 559.888 die from this disease. Malignancy in the prostate, female breast, and lung cancer occupying the top three most widely attacked U.S. population. From these three malignancies, lung cancer is a disease that causes the most deaths.

Besides being the largest cause of death, cancer is a disease that also cost quite a lot. To treat cancer, chemical treatment, radiation, and even surgical treatment are required. Many cancer patients are trapped by the expensive cost of cancer treatment.

Expensive cancer treatments make researchers interested to seek alternative treatment for this disease even more affordable. In May 2009, researchers from Norway published a study that gives new hope in the field of cancer treatment. They prove that the swimming training inhibits the growth of tumor cells in mice. In fact, the size of tumors in mice trained to swim can be reduced by 64% compared to the size of tumors in mice that were not trained to swim.

In this study, researchers injected tumor cells into mice. Then, the mice were split into two groups. One group was given swim training 5 times a week for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks, the size and weight of tumors from both groups were compared.

From this research, we expect a controlled physical activity such as swimming can be a new approach in preventing cancer and improving the effectiveness of cancer treatment. Let's swim to keep our health.