New research finds that women derive greater benefits when it comes to reducing mortality risk from doing the same amount of physical activity as men.

In a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 412,423 US adults (55% female, age 44 ± 17 years) were examined from 1997 – 2019 by a team from institutions including the School of Clinical Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing; Smidt Heart Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, Los Angeles; and the Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco.

Participants provided data on their exercise habits. For aerobic physical activity, the adjustable variables of frequency, duration, intensity and type were looked at for their effects on all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. Similarly, levels of muscle-strengthening exercises were used to categorise participants as physically active or inactive.

What were the benefits for women compared to for men?

The results showed that both men and women derived the maximum benefits at around 300 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), plateauing afterwards, but that women experienced more benefits in less time.

Men experienced an 18% risk reduction in all-cause mortality for this duration. By contrast, women experienced the same gain at the much lower 140 minutes per week of MVPA, continuing to benefit with increasing minutes of exercise. At 300 minutes per week, they had a 24% lower risk of premature death from any cause.

The greatest sex difference was seen in vigorous physical activity (VPA), with men achieving a 19% lower risk in all-cause mortality after engaging in 110 minutes a week of this type of exercise, while women saw the same gains after only 57 minutes a week of VPA. Moreover, for women, the 110 minutes a week was associated with a 24% lower mortality risk.

‘Our study…encourages women who may not be getting enough exercise for various reasons, that even relatively small amounts of exercise can provide significant benefits,’ Dr Hongwei Ji, co-author of the study from the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, said to The Guardian.

‘The 300-minute threshold is where we observed the greatest benefits, but statistically significant sex differences emerge with even smaller doses,’ said Ji.

140 minutes of exercise per week reduced women’s risk of premature death from any cause by 18%

Prof Emmanuel Stamatakis, of the University of Sydney, who was not involved in the work, also suggested to The Guardian that it was likely that the different responses were because ‘physical effort women make for a given physical task is higher than in men.’ He also thought it was likely women’s exercise sessions reflected higher relative loads than for men, and that the study’s results reflected variations in skeletal muscle composition between sexes.

Dr Susan Cheng, co-author of the research from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, also said: ‘We hope that [we] can help some women who may feel too busy or too intimidated to take on a new exercise routine…know they do not need to compare how much or how hard they are working to men or to anyone else.’

How much exercise should I be doing?

The NHS recommends that adults aged 19-64 should do at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity. They advise that adults aim to do strengthening activities that work all your major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms) on at least two days.

However, research shows that women consistently engage in less moderate-to-physical activity than their male counterparts, with the far-reaching health consequences of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and cancer.

The new study reported that women had a 36% lower risk of heart attack, stroke, or any other cardiovascular incident than those who did not exercise regularly.

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