Women Get More Benefits Than Men in Exercise, Study Finds

Historically, women have been led to believe that men have an advantage in muscle-building.

However, when it pertains to the cardiovascular advantages of exercise, women actually have the upper hand.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology revealed that women derive greater benefits from the same level of physical activity as men.

Conducted by researchers from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, the study analyzed physical activity data from 412,413 adults in the United States who participated in the National Health Interview Survey database between 1997 and 2019.

Participants provided details about the frequency, duration, intensity, and type of physical activity they engaged in during cardiovascular exercise.

In examining the data, researchers learned that men gained their maximum "survival benefit" from doing five hours per week of "moderate to vigorous aerobic physical activity," such as brisk walking or cycling.

However, women achieved that same benefit after just 2½ hours of moderate to vigorous exercise per week.

When it came to strength training, the gap was even wider.

Women required just one session of strength training exercises per week to gain the same outcome as men, who reached their maximum benefit from three weekly sessions.

And that's not the only way women came out on top.

While overall mortality risk decreased across all participants in the study, it was reduced for women by 24 percent and just 15 percent for men.

Progressively increasing physical activity not only lowered the risk of mortality, but also revealed gender variations in the amount of exercise required for the same risk reduction.

Dr. Susan Cheng, Director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging at Smidt Heart Institute and senior author of the study, shared this insight with Fox News Digital.

In effect, women did not need to exercise for as much time as men to achieve the same benefit, Cheng explained. 

Put another way, for a given amount of time and effort put into exercise, women had more to gain than men.

She said that she hopes the result of the study will help women who aren't currently engaged in regular physical activity understand that there is not just substantial benefit to be gained, but even more so than their male counterparts.

Part of what makes females and males different is that when it comes to living longer and living healthier, different types of investments are linked to different types of gains, Cheng added.

Source: mensjournal