Women are getting more bang for their buck than men when they exercise, researchers said in a new study published Monday.
The researchers found that women needed just under 2.5 hours of moderate to vigorous aerobic physical activity a week to get the same "survival benefit" that men get with five hours of physical activity. The mortality risk for women who engaged in regular physical activity was reduced by 24% compared to 15% for men, the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
"The beauty of this study is learning that women can get more out of each minute of moderate to vigorous activity than men do," Dr. Martha Gulati, co-lead author of the study, said. "It's an incentivizing notion that we hope women will take to heart."
Researchers analyzed health data spanning from 1997 through 2019 from 412,413 adults in the U.S. By the end of the study, 39,935 of the adults had died, of which 11,670 were cardiovascular deaths.
