WOmen only needs to exercise half as much as men to achieve the same longevity benefits, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
That’s good news for women who have trouble motivating themselves to go to the gym, says study co-author Dr. Martha Gulati, director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “To me, it’s news for women: a little goes a long way,” says Gulati.
In the study, men who did about 300 minutes of aerobic exercise each week had an 18% lower risk of death compared to inactive men, the researchers found. But in women, it took just 140 minutes of weekly exercise to see an equivalent benefit – and the risk of death was 24% lower in those who got about 300 minutes of exercise per week. (For both sexes, longevity benefits appeared to level off after 300 minutes of weekly exercise.)
The researchers conducted a similar analysis with muscle-strengthening exercises, such as strength training. They found the same pattern: For women, a single weekly strength workout was associated with as many longevity benefits as three weekly workouts for men.
Women generally have less muscle mass than men, Gulati explains, so “if they do the same amount of strengthening exercises, they can have greater benefits with smaller doses, just based on the fact that they don’t have as much to begin with. ” Other sex-based physiological differences, such as differences in the lungs And cardiopulmonary system can also play a role.
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To reach their findings, Gulati and her colleagues analyzed self-reported exercise habits of more than 400,000 American adults who completed the National Health Interview Survey from 1997 to 2017, and then compared that data to death certificates. About 40,000 of the participants died during the study period.
That observational approach – meaning the researchers looked for patterns in pre-existing data – cannot prove cause and effect. It’s possible that exercise didn’t make people live longer, but that active people in the study were generally healthier or had other lifestyle habits that extended lifespan. The researchers tried to control for these possibilities by excluding people who already had serious conditions or mobility limitations, or who died within the first two years of the study’s follow-up and thus may have been unhealthy from the start.
The study was also limited by its reliance on self-reported training data, which is not always accurate. The survey also asked about the exercise people did in their spare time, so may not have taken into account physical activity that took place at work or during household chores – a type of exercise that research increasingly suggests can improve health in meaningful ways. way can improve.
Partly because of these limitations, Gulati says more research is needed to confirm the findings. But, she says, the study – and others who have reached similar conclusions – provides a clear message that “women are not just little men” and that sex-based differences need to be included in research and public health policy. “For years we used men as the standard,” says Gulati, even though that may not have been right.
Take the federal physical activity guidelines, which give the same general recommendation for American adults: at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise (or 75 minutes of vigorous cardio) and two muscle-strengthening sessions per week. In 2020, about 28% of American men met both benchmarks, compared to 20% of American women. show data.
If anything, Gulati’s research suggests that women can experience significant longevity benefits even if they don’t quite meet those goals. But she says the study shouldn’t be discouraging for men either.
The latest research shows that people of both sexes benefit from even very short bursts of activity, as just a few minutes of exercise each day can extend lifespan.
“Our pitch should be the same for men and women: something is better than nothing,” says Gulati. “Sit less and move more.”
