Women are less likely to stick to the recommended time for exercise than men. However, when they do, at least their heart benefits more from it. This is the result of a study published in the journal "Nature Cardiovascular Research".
28.10.2025, 09:53
28.10.2025, 10:45
SDA
The World Health Organization recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week, or a combination of both. According to the study, moderate to intensive exercise of 150 minutes per week reduced the likelihood of coronary heart disease by 22 percent in women, but only by 17 percent in men.
The disease causes plaques to build up in the coronary arteries, which supply the organ with blood and therefore oxygen. This causes chest pain, known as angina pectoris, in those affected. However, the deposits can also lead to a heart attack and cardiac death.
The study also showed a great benefit of prolonged exercise: with around 250 minutes of moderate to intensive exercise per week, women can even reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by around 30 percent. To achieve the same value, men need to invest around 530 minutes - more than twice as much time.
Major differences in cardiovascular diseases
In recent years, many studies have shown that the sexes differ significantly when it comes to cardiovascular disease. Not only do women sometimes have completely different symptoms to men in the event of a heart attack. They also respond differently to treatment and preventive measures. Nevertheless, all people usually receive the same recommendations for preventive exercise programs. The new study now provides clear evidence that this approach is not sufficient, writes cardiologist Emily S. Lau from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in an accompanying commentary.
The team led by bioinformatician Jiajin Chen from Xiamen University in China analyzed data from the "UK Biobank" cohort study, which has been running since 2006. Over 85,000 participants in the UK wore a motion sensor for this study. The researchers combined this information with later health data. During a mean observation period of around eight years of around 80,000 people who did not have coronary heart disease at the beginning, 3764 events of such a disease occurred.
The researchers also investigated mortality. The analysis of around 5000 people with coronary heart disease at the start of the study revealed that men had to exercise around 1.7 times as much as women in order to achieve a comparable relative reduction in mortality risk as women during the observation period.
There are already successes
Women worldwide are less active in sports than men, writes the team of authors with reference to an earlier study. According to this study, 33.8 percent of women do too little sport, compared to 28.7 percent of men. This underlines the need to tailor exercise recommendations more precisely to women, argues commentator Lau. "Investment in gender-specific cardiovascular research has already contributed to a 30 percent reduction in cardiovascular mortality among women - an important milestone considering that one in three women worldwide dies from cardiovascular disease."
"The study is methodologically sound and has been published in a high-ranking journal," commented cardiologist Christina Magnussen from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf when asked by the German press agency dpa. "The results show significant gender differences in the effects of physical activity on the incidence of coronary heart disease and mortality." The direction and magnitude of the correlations are also possible for Germany.
However, she emphasizes that a review of the results in German cohort studies would be desirable, as the UK Biobank is not entirely representative of the general population. It contains predominantly white participants as well as people who tend to be healthier and more affluent and educated.
