Women might lower their risk for cardiovascular disease by twice the amount as men with exercise
The benefits of exercise are great for everyone – but may be even better for women, according to a new study.
Many studies have shown that any amount of physical activity helps to reduce risk of premature death, but a new study published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that women needed less exercise to gain the same benefit as men, said senior study author Dr. Susan Cheng, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.
“Put another way, for a given amount of time and effort put into exercise, women had more to gain than men,” said Cheng, who is also a professor of cardiology at Cedars-Sinai.
Most adults are not meeting the recommended amounts of exercise, Cheng added. Adults need 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity and two days of muscle strengthening activity a week, according to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.
In this study, more than 400,000 US adults ages 27 to 61 reported on their exercise levels in a survey every few years from the National Center for Health Statistics from 1997 to 2019. Researchers then used the National Death Index records from the two years after the survey period to track mortality from all-causes and specifically cardiovascular related illness.
Nearly 40,000 people in the survey died during that period, and 11,670 of those were cardiovascular deaths, the study said.
Over that time, women who exercised for at least 150 minutes a week were 24% less likely to die from any cause than women who exercised less than that amount. Men who exercised for at least 150 minutes each week were 15% less likely to die than other men who did not reach that threshold, the data showed. Women were also 36% less likely to have a heart attack, stroke, or other cardiovascular event if they exercised, compared to a 14% reduced risk in men who exercised.
Whereas men needed 300 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity to see their biggest reduction is risk of death, women saw the same benefit at 140 minutes a week – and their risk kept getting lower as they went up to 300 minutes a week, the study showed.
Visit https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/19/health/exercise-women-benefit-wellness/index.html https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/19/health/exercise-women-benefit-wellness to read full article.