You’ve heard it before: adults should be getting at least 150 минут of moderate physical activity every week, preferably spread out throughout the week. Or maybe you’ve heard it should be 300 minutes. But that amounts to over 40 minutes of exercise per day!
So what’s the real threshold of exercise that leads to health benefits? Interestingly, a recent исследование suggests the benefits of exercise may be realized sooner in women than men.
Exercise recommendations for the general public
Several organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Heart Association (AHA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have specific exercise recommendations for the general public. They’re broken down by age group, and for this article we’ll focus on adults aged 18-64.
All three health organizations are in agreement about the basic exercise recommendations:
- At least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every week (think a brisk walk or light jog) or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise (think running)
- An additional 2 days of strength-training every week (lifting weights or other resistance training)
- More time moving and less time sitting (think short walk breaks throughout the day)
- Exercising up to 300 minutes per week gives additional health benefits
Now, keep in mind, these recommendations are не specific to men or women, and that’s where things could get interesting. Do women and men require the same kinds and amounts of exercise for similar outcomes?
Men and women respond to exercise differently
Investigators working together from Tsinghua University in China and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California wanted to know whether the benefits of physical activity were different between men and women [1]. To answer this question, they pooled data from the National Health Interview Survey, resulting in 400,000 adults in the United States who supplied survey data about their exercise activity between 1997 and 2019.
The Tsinghua/Cedars-Sinai исследование authors acknowledge long-established differences in how women and men respond to exercise [2]. This might be most obvious if we think about how easily men build muscle in the gym, whereas women (even those doing the same lifts!) won’t emerge with the same bulky arms. Women and men also have different thresholds of exercise tolerance, from aerobic capacity to maximum lifting ability. There was even one review that showed women’s hearts adapt in a different way physiologically after exercise than men. “Female athletes tend toward eccentric remodeling, that is, the chambers of the heart enlarge proportionally; Men are more likely to show concentric hypertrophy, meaning thicker walls of the heart,” one study finds [3].
Put simply, our bodies are different—and, naturally, they respond differently, even to the same activities (like exercise!).
Put simply, our bodies are different—and, naturally, they respond differently, even to the same activities (like exercise!).
Different ways to measure the effects of exercise
The Tsinghua/Cedars-Sinai study focused on cardiovascular and all-cause mortality when examining the effects of exercise on men and women. In simple terms, this means they were measuring how exercise changed the likelihood of a person dying from a heart attack or stroke (cardiovascular), and dying at all (all-cause mortality). Participants who had preexisting conditions related to their heart, like history of stroke, and other conditions, like cancer, were not included in the analysis. From the remaining adults, they tracked the frequency, duration, and type of physical activity (abbreviated as ‘PA’) [1].
Spoiler: When both groups exercised the same amount, women had reduced all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality compared to men.
Benefits were observed in women after less exercise compared to men
We can think of the benefits of exercise as a slowly rising curve. If you don’t exercise much at all, you aren’t going to gain the benefits. As you increase your exercise amount, you’ll start to see noticeable changes in your health. Может быть, you’ll start sleeping better, maybe you’ll lose weight, maybe you’ll build muscle or change your body composition [4].
Eventually, this rising curve turns into a plateau when you have reached your maximum achievable benefit from любой amount of exercise. In other words, more exercise (of any kind) won’t give you any more benefits, and could actually begin to cause harm, like increasing fatigue and injury risk, or even hurting your fertility [5].
In the Tsinghua/Cedars-Sinai study, the researchers observed that men reached their maximum achievable benefit after about 300 minutes of moderate or vigorous (heart-rate raising) exercise weekly [1]. Continued exercise didn’t have any effect on all-cause mortality. However, women reached the same benefit as men after only 140 minutes of exercise per week. Additionally, they saw benefits that surpassed those in men, up to a maximum of 300 minutes per week. In other words, the researchers found evidence that women’s bodies have a lower threshold requirement for exercise compared to men.
Researchers observed that men reached their maximum achievable benefit after about 300 minutes of moderate or vigorous (heart-rate raising) exercise weekly [1]. Continued exercise didn’t have any effect on all-cause mortality. However, women reached the same benefit as men after only 140 minutes of exercise per week.
What about when the researchers focused on strength training exercise? They observed that men generally strength-trained more than women, and reached their maximum mortality reduction after about 3 sessions weekly. Women had the same benefit after only один strength-training session. And when women strength trained three times a week? They had twice as large reduction in mortality risk compared to men.
What an amazing and encouraging study for women to be more physically active!
What this means for planning your exercise routine
The main takeaway from the Tsinghua/Cedars-Sinai study is that women should be encouraged to get active! Compared to men, we see подробнее benefits with меньше exercise. While women consistently lag behind men in exercise engagement, the researchers hoped these data would help change this. Their conclusions also suggest health organizations could benefit from sex-specific exercise recommendations.
So don’t let those big numbers of 300 minutes of exercise scare you, and don’t fall into an all-or-nothing trap when it comes to how much exercise you should get. Any exercise is better than none—and it turns out women might not always need that maximum number to get maximum benefits.
