A recent study suggests that women may benefit more from exercise than men, requiring less exercise to gain similar benefits.
Women who exercised for at least 150 minutes a week had a 24% lower risk of death, while men needed 300 minutes for a similar reduction.
“Put another way, for a given amount of time and effort put into exercise, women had more to gain than men,” Dr. Susan Cheng said.
Physiological differences and societal norms may contribute to this disparity.
Exercise, even in small amounts, offers significant health benefits for all.
“If I said to a patient, ‘hey, I have a medicine that you can take every day that will not only help to prevent heart disease, heart attacks, cancer, memory loss, dementia, but it will improve your mood,’ people would be going nuts for it,” Dr. Andrew Freeman said. “And the truth is, it exists. It’s just not in a pill form – its sweat equity.”
“Another part of the issue is the pattern of social and societal norms that have historically tended to encourage more physical activity among males than females throughout the life course – we still see this difference in how sports activities for both children and adults are organized, even though there are some changing trends,” Cheng said.
“It turns out that women are not just little men, but rather, they have a completely different physiology, which is hinted at by the both the muscle studies and this study,” Freeman said. “I think it’s really important to tailor your treatments, your therapeutics, your discussions, based on the people that are in front of you.”
“We’re starting to learn that very personalized medicine, based on (sex) and size and ethnicity and all these other things are starting to become much more important and relevant,” he added.
“It’s always hard to fully tease out the exact mechanisms, but whatever it is, it’s hard to argue with the truth,” he said. “If the truth is that women get a better gain, then so be it. And for what reason – that may be another study that comes out to help explain that.”
Personalized exercise routines tailored to individual needs are crucial.
Experts say to aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise daily and focus on enjoying the activity to make it a habit.
“The irony is that exercise is free. The catch, of course, is that exercise takes work,” Cheng said.
“People tend to take away the message that this is a one-size-fits all situation, and that this is an all-or-nothing situation – that you have to do a whole bunch of exercise on a regular basis or else you don’t have much to gain,” Cheng said.
“Every single person I talk to, I talk to about the major pillars of lifestyle medicine: eating plants, exercising more, stressing less, loving more and sleeping enough,” Freeman said.
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