While focusing on the immediate benefits of exercise is typically more motivating than the potential long-term benefits, there’s no doubt that staying active throughout life can pay dividends far into the future.

As a general rule, the earlier you start and the longer you stay active, the greater the payoffs in terms of health, disease prevention, and longevity. Recent research^1,2 highlights the importance of staying active during your teenage years.

As reported by Reuters:³

“Researchers who analyzed how often women exercised while in their teens found that being active for just 1.3 hours a week had a positive impact as they got older.

‘The main finding is that exercise during adolescence is associated with a reduced risk of mortality, or death, in middle aged to older women’…”

Active Girls Live Longer

Overall, women who had a history of exercising for an average of 1.33 hours per week during their teen years had a 16 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, and a 15 percent lower all-cause mortality risk.

Those who were active as teens and kept up their exercise habit as adults had a 20 percent lower risk of death from all causes.

According to lead author Sarah J. Nechuta, “Our results support the importance of promoting exercise participation in adolescence, and highlight the critical need for the initiation of disease prevention early in life.”

An earlier study⁴ found very similar results. Here, strenuous activity at age 12 was associated with a reduced risk for breast cancer during pre- and post-menopause.

Women who had engaged in moderate exercise during adulthood also had a significantly reduced risk of post-menopausal tumors.

Exercise Reduces Risk of Many Cancers in Both Men and Women

This certainly isn’t the first time researchers have found links between exercise and reductions in cancer and early death.

According to a 2003 paper⁵ published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, “more than a hundred epidemiologic studies on the role of physical activity and cancer prevention have been published.”

The authors noted that:

“The data are clear in showing that physically active men and women have about a 30 to 40 percent reduction in the risk of developing colon cancer, compared with inactive persons…

With regard to breast cancer, there is reasonably clear evidence that physically active women have about a 20 to 30 percent reduction in risk, compared with inactive women.

It also appears that 30 to 60 min·d-1 of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity is needed to decrease the risk of breast cancer, and that there is likely a dose-response relation.”

An oft-repeated pattern is that the longer you exercise, the more pronounced the benefits. The featured study looked at exercise patterns during women’s teen years.

Another recent study^6,7 found that men who stayed fit in middle age had a 55 percent lower risk of lung cancer and a 44 percent lower risk of bowel cancer after the age of 65.