Workouts for heart: Men may have to log roughly twice as much weekly exercise as women to secure the same drop in coronary heart disease risk, according to new research that urges sex-specific advice on physical activity.
Drawing on activity-tracker data from more than 80,000 middle-aged participants in the UK Biobank, scientists led by Dr Jiajin Chen of Xiamen University found that women who accumulated about 250 minutes of exercise a week saw their heart-disease risk fall by 30%. Men needed around 530 minutes, nearly nine hours, to achieve a comparable benefit. The analysis, published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, reinforces earlier evidence that women gain more cardiovascular protection per minute of exercise, even as they are less likely than men to meet activity targets.
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In participants free of coronary disease at the start, women who met a standard 150-minute weekly goal had a 22% lower risk of developing heart disease over eight years, versus 17% in men hitting the same mark. The gap widened when researchers modeled higher activity levels: a 30% risk reduction arrived at 250 minutes for women but not until 530 minutes for men.
The most striking difference appeared in more than 5,000 participants who already had coronary heart disease. Among those who met weekly activity targets, women’s risk of death during follow-up was roughly three times lower than that of men with similar exercise levels, suggesting especially strong secondary-prevention gains for women.
Why exercise may deliver outsized benefits to women remains uncertain. Researchers point to possible roles for sex hormones, muscle-fiber composition, and differences in how the body processes glucose during exertion. Regardless, senior author Prof Yan Wang said both sexes reap “substantial” cardiovascular benefits from moving more.
