Research shows that women can benefit more from avoiding early graves with the same amount of regular exercise than men.
According to the NHS, men and women aged 19 to 64 should get at least 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week and do strength-strengthening activities at least twice a week. there is.
However, research shows that girls and women tend to be less physically active than boys and men.
Research shows that men and women do not derive the same benefits from the same level of physical activity.
“Our study doesn't suggest that women should exercise less, but rather that even relatively small amounts of exercise can have significant benefits for women who don't get enough exercise for a variety of reasons. We're encouraging what's possible,” said co-author Dr. Hongwei Ji. Research results from Qingdao University Hospital.
Writing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Ji et al. report how they studied 412,413 participants with no underlying conditions recruited from 1997 to 2017. By the end of December 2019, 39,935 people had died, of which 11,670 were due to cardiovascular disease.
During the study, participants completed a health survey that included questions about exercise.
The results revealed that men were more likely than women to engage in regular physical activity and strengthening exercises.
However, exercise was associated with a reduced risk of early death, including cardiovascular events, in both men and women, although the benefit was greater for the latter.
Among other findings, the researchers found that doing 140 minutes of moderate exercise per week reduced a woman's risk of premature death from any cause by 18% compared to being inactive. did. In contrast, men needed to do 300 minutes of such exercise a week to get a similar effect.
The risk reduction increased with time spent exercising for both men and women until they engaged in about 300 minutes of moderate exercise per week, and then plateaued. At this level, women had a 24% lower risk of premature death from any cause compared to being inactive.
“The 300-minute threshold is where the greatest effect was observed, but statistically significant sex differences also emerge at even lower doses,” Ji said.
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However, the researchers cautioned that the study was based on self-reported exercise and did not include physical activity associated with household activities.
Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis from the University of Sydney, who was not involved in the study, said the study was well conducted.
“Although women appear to engage in less leisure-time exercise, their risk of death decreases more sharply regardless of the amount or frequency of weekly exercise,” she said. “This is not all that surprising given that such analyzes do not take into account that women exert higher physical effort than men for certain physical tasks.”
Stamatakis said that women's exercise sessions likely reflect a higher relative load than men's, and that various properties of skeletal muscle differ between the sexes and could explain differences in response to the same absolute amount of exercise. He added that it is sexual.
Dr. Susan Chen, co-author of the study at Cedars-Sinai's Smit Heart Institute, found that different types of investments are associated with different types of benefits for men and women when it comes to living longer and healthier. was shown in this study.
“Perhaps just understanding this one concept makes us realize how hard we are working, or how hard we are working, because we are too busy or afraid to take up a new exercise routine. I hope I can help some women know that they don't have to compare themselves to others,” she said. “They can navigate their own path to success, and every progress counts.”
