A Manhattan, New York, en janvier 2023. JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
Ten thousand steps. The health benefits of walking are no longer in doubt. But to what extent does designing the environment encourage this activity and prevent certain diseases? Living in walkable neighborhoods is associated with a 26% lower risk of developing obesity-related cancers, a recent study estimates.
In this work, published in Environmental Health Perspectives on October 4, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York) followed more than 14,000 women belonging to the New York University cohort for nearly thirty years. They calculated the pedestrian potential of the neighborhood, the “walkability”, according to the place of residence, the density of the population, the diversity of occupation of the landscape (residential, commercial, etc.), the design of the streets, the connectivity, i.e. ease of going from one place to another, etc.
At the same time, they identified in this population primary cancers linked to obesity. Excess weight is in fact linked to a higher risk of contracting thirteen types of cancer, including postmenopausal breast, ovarian, endometrial, multiple myeloma, etc.
Remember that we speak of obesity when the body mass index (BMI, weight divided by height squared) is greater than 30 and of overweight when the BMI is greater than 25. In the United States, 40% of the population exceeds the obesity threshold. In 2020, in France, nearly one in two people are overweight, including 17% obese. This multifactorial and complex disease, which mainly affects disadvantaged populations, presents health risks. It is associated in particular with cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and cancers.
“Facilitating healthy lifestyles”
Concretely, among the women in the American study, initially aged 34 to 65 years, with an average age of 50.6 years, 18.2% had cancer, the most frequent being those of the postmenopausal breast, followed by those of the colon-rectum and the endometrium.
Compared to those living in the least walkable neighborhood, volunteers living in the most “walkable” area had a 26% lower risk of obesity-related cancer. They also had the lowest BMI.
“We know that the more “walkable” the neighborhoods are, the more people do physical activity, but this work is very interesting because it makes a link between “walkability” and the occurrence of diseases”, comments Jean-Michel Oppert, head of the nutrition department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital (AP-HP), who did not participate in the study. In practice, “we cannot give relevant life advice to patients without having information about their living environment, where they live, etc. »summarizes the specialist.
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