Physical activity may offset some of alcohol's lethal harms
Published today in the British J ournal of Sports Medicine , this first-of-its-kind study found that for alcohol drinkers, physical activity may decrease the risks of dying both from cancer and from "all-cause mortality" that is, deaths from any cause. The researchers drew on responses from eight nationally representative baseline health surveys carried out in the United Kingdom between 1994 and 2006 which looked at the impact of physical activity and alcohol consumption on health outcomes. "Our research suggests that physical activity has substantial health benefits even in the presence of potentially unhealthy behaviours such as drinking alcohol," said senior author Associate Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, from the Charles Perkins Centre and Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Sydney. "Among physically inactive people, we saw that the risk for cancer and all-cause mortality was higher even at relatively low levels of drinking. "...