Everyday calorie burners

Source: Mayo Clinic

Stay Active Outdoors

This is the place where you can really burn some calories and build strength. How many calories do typical outdoor activities burn? It varies a lot depending on your size (the heavier you are, the more you burn), age (younger people burn more calories), and how much muscle you have (muscle burns more calories than fat). But on average, here’s what you might expect to burn per hour while cleaning up your yard:

• Shoveling snow: 400-600 calories per hour

• Heavy yard work (landscaping, moving rocks, hauling dirt): 400-600 calories per hour

• Raking and bagging leaves: 350-450 calories per hour

• Gardening: pulling weeds, planting flowers, etc.: 200-400 calories per hour

• Mowing the lawn: 250-350 calories per hour

Household Chores

Cleaning house is definitely a calorie burner. The approximate average calorie count of typical housecleaning activities is:

• Major cleaning (turning mattresses, washing windows, washing the car): 175-250 calories per hour.

• Moderate housecleaning (laundry loads, mopping and sweeping, vacuuming): 150-200 calories per hour

• Light housecleaning (dusting, straightening up, taking out the trash): 120-170 calories per hour.

• Child care: 300-600 calories per hour (depending on how old the kids are and how active they are).

Cancer prevention

Source: National Cancer Institute

Cancer prevention is action taken to lower the chance of getting cancer. By preventing cancer, the number of new cases of cancer in a group or population is lowered. Hopefully, this will lower the number of deaths caused by cancer.

To prevent new cancers from starting, scientists look at risk factors and protective factors. Anything that increases your chance of developing cancer is called a cancer risk factor; anything that decreases your chance of developing cancer is called a cancer protective factor.

Some risk factors for cancer can be avoided, but many cannot. For example, both smoking and inheriting certain genes are risk factors for some types of cancer, but only smoking can be avoided. Regular exercise and a healthy diet may be protective factors for some types of cancer. Avoiding risk factors and increasing protective factors may lower your risk but it does not mean that you will not get cancer.

Different ways to prevent cancer are being studied, including:

• Changing lifestyle or eating habits.

• Avoiding things known to cause cancer.

• Taking medicines to treat a precancerous condition or to keep cancer from starting.

Healthy Hometown is working toward a “healthy” Clinton County.