Housework Cuts Breast Cancer Risk: Commentary

Posted by Mark Radulich on 12.29.2006

Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests plus my thoughts on this issue.


As the man once said, this is one of those blog posts that blogs itself. Now some may think I'm about to go into a rant against wives here, my wife even. No, not today. To me this story speaks to a greater issue, feminism. You see, we have all of these pseudo-intellectual women who have gone way past the idea that women should have the right to work and earn a fair wage and have been demanding that society forget all of the inherent differences between men and women completely. At one point they were so successful at this tact that it took Time Magazine to write an article affirming that, yes Josephine, there are in fact distinct differences between men and women...whoda thunk it?

So going back to our good friends, the intellectual collegiate feminists (man haters), here we have a group of people saying that if a woman does any housework, any at all, she is supporting a patriarchal society in which women are second class citizens to men. Now we live in a world where outside of cooking (maybe) nobody wants to clean up around the house...and I mean nobody. Men don't want to vaccuum or do the laundry because mommy used to do it and they haven't figured out yet (unless they've served in the military) that the washing machine won't kill them. Women don't want to do it because they're depressed. Many don't really want to work but have been taught that a meaningful life is one where she does work despite the inner desire to (perish the thought) be a housewife.

It also doesn't help that we've been taught that housework and childcare aren't real jobs when in fact they are probably the most important job of all.

Logic and common sense won't undo the damage that Marxist inspired feminism has wrought against the last few generations of women but maybe science will. I hope this story gets lots of coverage and women begin to spend less time at the gym and more time helping clean the house.

BTW, if I may be so bold...since I've gotten married, I've done quite a bit of housework myself. I do the laundry, sweep the floors, vaccuum, take out the trash and recyclables and occassionally clean the garage. Every other weekend I also mow the lawn and if I get to it, pull weeds. I don't know about cancer but I will say that when I'm engaged in housework, I don't need to hit the treadmill as there is plenty of exercise inherent in the work I'm doing. As a matter of fact, any weight I've lost since the wedding has been because of that and eating less and not because of anything else (though I'm sure playing rugby helps). My point is that though this article focuses on women and cancer, doing housework can also help men stay reasonably fit as well.

The research on more than 200,000 women from nine European countries found doing household chores was far more cancer protective than playing sport.

Dusting, mopping and vacuuming was also better than having a physical job.

The women in the Cancer Research UK-funded study spent an average of 16 to 17 hours a week cooking, cleaning and doing the washing.

Experts have long known that physical exercise can reduce the risk of breast cancer, probably through hormonal and metabolic changes.

But it has been less clear how much and what types of exercise are necessary for this risk reduction.

And much of past work has examined the link between exercise and breast cancer in post-menopausal women only.

The latest study looked at both pre- and post-menopausal women and a range of activities, including work, leisure and housework.

All forms of physical activity combined reduced the breast cancer risk in post-menopausal women, but had no obvious effect in pre-menopausal women.

Chores protected

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."

He recommend that men and women take regular exercise and maintain a healthy body weight to help prevent cancer.

The research is published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention.