BRATTLEBORO — Honestly, some discoveries are not worth the trouble of a press release. Our community hospital's newsletter reported last fall that “women who exercised strenuously for more than six hours a week and had no family history of the disease were 23 percent less likely to develop breast cancer."
Apparently, the National Cancer Institute gathered this conclusion after studying 32,000 women for over 11 years. And big surprise: the six-plus hours of exercise per week only seemed to improve a woman's chances of avoiding breast cancer if she wasn't already overweight.
“Strenuous” exercise translated to running, fast jogging, competitive tennis, aerobics, bicycling on hills, and fast dancing. It did not include walking, strength training, hiking, tennis “for fun,” swimming, gardening, Pilates, or yoga.
My first response upon reading such information is to grumble, “Who are these women and when can I pull out all their hair?”
But after I restrain my inner primate, I have to wonder why I instantly want to hurt women who can find the time and the passion to exercise strenuously more than six hours a week. I spend an inordinate amount of time in my garden, and another woman has never kicked me in the shins over my love of dirt and tomatoes. Am I seriously concerned that when a svelte woman sprints down my street while I am out shoveling manure she is thinking, Man, that is a case of breast cancer just waiting to happen?
No, I'm just annoyed at another direct hit by well-intentioned scientists and the media on my sense of vulnerability.
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This study from the National Cancer Institute is paralyzing, akin to receiving an orange alert from the Homeland Security Advisory System.
Let's see: I have no family history so there is hope, but if I'm overweight, then I'm kind of doomed, but kicking up to six hours of strenuous exercise might improve my chances of avoiding breast cancer only by 17 percent. Omigod, what'll eight hours do for me?
As it happens, I do exercise regularly, though it didn't come easily. I am a member of that pre–Title IX generation of women for whom the concept of physical exertion was held up as vaguely optional. We had gym classes, we took President Kennedy's President's Council on Physical Fitness tests twice a year, but we were the girls who had to have the privilege of going to a private, single-sex school and a love for field hockey to actually play on a team.
It was my husband's self-discipline for exercise that finally inspired my own. I still wrestle with the Inertia Beast whenever I tie on my sneakers, but exercise has been a part of my self-care regimen for over 20 years.
It's frustrating that the National Cancer Institute's study might have me believe my routine is clearly of the inferior sort: walking, gardening, strength training, Pilates, and yoga.
If this is indeed some kind of race, and I am the tortoise, I'll just have to take my chances.
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My personal family history includes considerable longevity coupled with increasingly bad balance and falls. For the sake of the long haul, better I bet on saving and strengthening my knees and hips and practicing mindfulness. Come to think of it, a car may run me off the road tomorrow, or all the instant Carnation Slender I drank in the eighth grade will manifest in sphincter-of-Oddi cancer. I am powerless in this crapshoot, except in my ability to thoughtfully make the next best choice and then surrender to what luck brings me.
Which will hopefully include abundant tomatoes from my garden.
Dr. Edward Giovannucci of Harvard Medical School concluded in 1999, after reviewing 72 studies, that one's intake of tomatoes and tomato-based products has been consistently related to a lower risk of cancer.
Given the choice, I'll increase my intake of tomatoes over bicycling on hills any day.