Exercise Has Significant Benefits for Heart Health
Ian Canham/Alamy
Men over 50 may need to exercise more than twice as much as women to get the same heart health benefits. An analysis of activity tracking data found that men in this age group need almost 9 hours per week of moderate to vigorous activity – such as brisk walking or cycling – to reduce their risk of coronary heart disease by 30%, compared to about 4 hours for women.
Scientists already suspected that women got more heart benefits than men, based on self-reported exercise data, but those numbers aren’t always accurate.
To overcome this problem, Jiajin Chen of Xiamen University in China and colleagues took data from wrist-worn activity trackers collected by the UK Biobank study and compared it to participants’ health records over a period of about eight years.
First, the team analyzed information from 80,243 adults, with an average age of 61, who had no personal history of coronary heart disease. Among women, those who did at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week saw their risk of developing coronary heart disease decrease by 22 percent. For men, exercising as much was linked to a drop of only 17 percent.
Achieving a 30 percent risk reduction required significantly more exercise – with a notable difference between the sexes: 250 minutes for women and 530 minutes for men.
Next, the team looked at 5,169 participants who had already been diagnosed with coronary heart disease. They were 67 years old on average and two-thirds of them were men. With 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous weekly exercise, women were 70 percent less likely to die over the next eight years – for any reason – than women who exercised less. In contrast, men who did 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise each week were only about 20 percent less likely to die than their less active counterparts.
“It’s not bad news for men, it’s just something we should know about,” says Nir Eynon of Monash University, Australia. “Once we know that, we can do better – we can exercise more. And while that’s reassuring for women who are busy all the time, I also think women shouldn’t miss the fact that they need to exercise, too.”
Chen and colleagues were not available for comment, but in their paper they suggest that the discrepancy could be explained by hormones, as higher estrogen levels could improve fat burning during exercise. It could also be linked to biological differences that could cause women to use more respiratory, metabolic and muscular strength to perform the same physical tasks as men, Eynon says.
The study is “robust” and highlights the need for sex-specific guidelines, says Ersilia DeFilippis of Columbia University in New York. One drawback, however, is that it focuses on a primarily affluent and well-educated population that is about 93% white. Black women tend to have worse cardiovascular outcomes than white women, DeFilippis says, and social factors play an important role in health and adherence to treatment plans.
“It will be imperative in the future to understand how these findings apply to a more racially diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged population, given their higher burden of cardiovascular disease,” she says.
Nonetheless, the results from this older population suggest that even exercising later in life can have significant benefits – although activity should be tailored to people’s age and physical abilities, she adds. “It’s never too late to start moving and being more active.”
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