Women need half as much exercise as men to live longer, study finds

A new study exploring longevity suggests men and women may need drastically different amounts of exercise to reap the same benefits.

How is it possible that most days feel both long and short at the same time?

Despite spending a large chunk of each day at work, to be the ‘best version of ourselves’, we’re expected to also fit in eight hours of sleep, hit 10,000 steps, and check off two servings of fruit and five servings of vegetables every 24 hours.

No matter where we turn, it feels like we’re bombarded with universal lifestyle recommendations, each accompanied by fixed parameters. However, not every expert believes in the universal adaptation of certain pieces of health advice.

According to a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, men and women have very different physical exercise requirements when it comes to reaping the same health benefits.

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And ladies, it seems the findings have fallen in our favour for once, revealing women only need to exercise half as much as men to unlock long-term longevity.

Based on the findings, if a workout is cut short or skipped entirely, women don’t need to spend the rest of the day wracked with guilt. It’s welcomed news for the ladies who struggle to find the time– or motivation– to get themselves to the gym every day.

“For me, the news to women is: a little goes a long way,” says Dr Martha Gulati, co-author of the study and director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

The research, designed to provide evidence that ‘women are not just small men’, shows once and for all that future research and public-health policies must incorporate sex-based differences, “For years, we’ve used men as the standard,” Gulati says.

Limitations of the study

The study took an observational approach to the findings, meaning pre-existing data was sourced and examined. Analysing the exercise habits of over 400,000 adults in the United States, Gulati and her team compared the data (sourced between 1997 and 2017) with death records.

Given the majority of the data analysed was self-reported (and therefore may contain inaccuracies as a result of human error), the results of the study must be interpreted with a grain of salt.

Additionally, the surveys examined only asked people to report on their exercise habits during their free time so did not take into account the small, incremental movements and bursts of exercise people experience every day, such as walking up the office stairs or rigorously vacuuming the entire house.

The observational approach, while useful in deciphering patterns of behaviour amongst a large group of people, doesn’t offer insight into other lifestyle factors that potentially influenced the results, such as diet, sleep and preexisting health issues. In an attempt to avoid too many outlying factors, the research team excluded individuals from the survey pool who had preexisting conditions, or who had died within the first two years.

The time-saving findings

When analysing the surveys of male participants, the researchers found men who reported an average of 300 minutes of aerobic exercise a week were found to have an 18 per cent lower risk of death compared to inactive men.

Women in the same category, however, reported the equivalent lowered health risk with only 140 minutes of aerobic exercise. For women who exercised for 300 minutes (the same benchmark as the active male participants) a 24 per cent lower risk was reported. The longevity benefits appeared to plateau in both men and women beyond 300 minutes.

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When it came to comparing both genders in the strength training category, the data delivered similar findings. Following just one weekly stretch session, women recorded the same longevity benefit as men did after three.

As Gulati explains, women physiologically tend to have less muscle mass than men, “If [women] do the same amount of strengthening exercises, they may have greater benefits with smaller doses just based on the fact that they don’t have as much to begin with,” she says.

Gender and stats aside, Gulati and her fellow researchers say it’s important not to feel discouraged if you aren’t hitting your exact exercise targets. “Our pitch should be the same to men and women: something is better than nothing,” Gulati says. “Sit less and move more.”