Exercise and physical activity should benefit all areas of health, including cancer prevention, but in the case of ovarian cancer, researchers are stating that it doesn't seem to make a difference in the number of women who go on to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

Karolinska Institute in Stockholm researchers tracked 96,000 women from Norway and Sweden for over a decade, noting levels of physical activity at different points in each woman's life to ovarian cancer diagnosis among all women in the group, and found the risk of developing ovarian cancer was the same for women who were very physically active compared to women who did not move around too much.


Of course, the study lead Dr. Elisabete Weiderpass from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm emphatically stresses that "Despite not protecting for ovarian cancer, physical activity has so many other positive health effects that women should be encouraged to exercise daily, if possible." I'd have to second that advice. There are too many good reasons why physical activity is essential to good health. While this study does not indicate a benefit to lowering ovarian cancer risk, later it might be found that there were other extenuating circumstances to the study that made it look like exercise was not a benefit when it turns out to be one. Studies can go that way.