The findings challenge current recommendations that ignore gender differences.
Women benefit from fitness more than men, suggests a recent study. It was reported, among other things The Washington Post.
Based on the results, it seems that women need to exercise less than men to get the same health benefits. The discovery is interesting because, for example, in Finland exercise recommendations for adults do not take gender into account.
Women can reduce their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease with less than half the amount of exercise that men achieve the same benefits.
In men, the greatest “mortality benefit” was achieved with 300 minutes of moderately strenuous or strenuous exercise per week. Those who exercised that much had an 18 percent lower mortality risk than men who did not exercise.
For women, 140 minutes of weekly exercise was enough for the same. If the women moved as described above for 300 minutes, their mortality risk was reduced by 24 percent.
For women, one gym session a week may be enough
It also seems to matter how many training sessions the fitness is divided into.
Men got the most benefits from three muscle-strengthening exercises per week. The women, on the other hand, were able to achieve the same with just one weekly muscle training.
The cardiologist who participated in the study Martha Gulati explains to The Washington Post that men need more exercise because, on average, they have more muscle mass and less fat than women.
The results should be treated with caution, as the activity of the subjects was not actually measured. The data consisted of self-reported exercise amounts.
More than 412,000 US adults participated in the study. The findings were published Journal of the American College of Cardiology.