Housework Prevents Cancer

Does housework count as exercise?  Wishful thinking, right?  Maybe not. 

Take a look at how many calories some of your regular household chores burn.

Look at those calories burn.Calories burned per half-hour

Doing laundry - 73

Making the bed - 68

Cooking - 85

Washing the dishes - 78

Dusting - 85

Sweeping - 112

Vacuuming - 119

Scrubbing the floors - 129

Rearranging furniture - 204

Washing windows - 102

Mowing the lawn - 187

Carrying a small child (up to 15 lbs.) up and down stairs - 289

But wait!  There’s an even better perk to housework than just burning calories.  A European study published in 2006, suggests that women who exercise by doing housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer.  The study looked at both pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women and a range of activities including work, leisure sports, and housework.  After following the women for more than 6 years, the researchers found that spending 16 to 17 hours on housework a week cut breast cancer risk in the pre-menopausal women by 30% and 20% in the post-menopausal women.   

Interestingly, only housework significantly reduced the participants of both categories of women, even more than leisure sports.  The international authors said their results suggested that moderate forms of regular physical activity, such as housework, may be more important than less frequent but more intense recreational physical activity in reducing breast cancer risk.

While the study focused only on women and breast cancer, it’s easy to conclude that these findings should translate for other forms of cancer as well.  So next time you have to pick up that mop or fold copious amounts of laundry, you can think of the time spent on chores as time spent doing something potentially good for your body. 

And maybe, just maybe, you can talk your guy into helping with the dishes.  Guys need exercise (and cancer prevention), too.