Healthy Living

Women want to know how we can better prevent breast cancer, sure, but why do researchers constantly keep thinking up shiny new ways to spin old advice? It's just a liiiittle bit patronizing.

Take the latest example ... a study funded by Cancer Research UK found that "extremely active women" -- defined as those who do SIX HOURS of housework per day (aka run their own housekeeping biz?!) -- have a 13 percent lower risk of breast cancer. For moderately active women, it's 10 percent, and if you only do, say, two-and-a-half hours of housework or walking or three hours of gardening A DAY, you get a 6 percent dip. Uh. Yay? Are they serious? How many women have that much time per day to devote to those things?

As for the idea that the more exercise we do, the better off we are, and the lower our risk will be for breast cancer -- and come on, ANY disease -- it's like, "Alright already! We get it!!" How many times and in how many different ways do researchers plan to tell us to eat right, work out in order to live longer (maybe, hopefully)?

Okay, well, given the western world's obesity epidemic, perhaps we do need to hear it a bazillion more times before we get it through our thick skulls. Even with that being the case, how 'bout some realistic advice? Measuring down to the number of hours or minutes people need to play Martha Stewart in the garden or around the house seems, uh, just slightly out-to-lunch.

Better yet, researchers would do well to tell us to simply "move more." Wear pedometers. Park our cars far away from the mall entrance. Take the stairs. All of those stress-free small steps add up, and before you know it, you've probably earned at least your 6 percent drop in breast cancer risk! Without having to worry that you didn't meet your research-proven requirement of however many HOURS of June Cleaver-esque activity you've done that day.

How annoying is research like this!? Do you believe the answer to staving off disease is to simply to "move more"?

Image via Evil Erin/Flickr