In a study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, researchers found that even modest amounts of exercise can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). The results indicate a gender difference in the amount of activity required to achieve similar heart-health benefits, with women needing substantially less weekly exercise than men.
According to the analysis, women who engage in around four hours of exercise per week experience an average 30 percent reduction in CHD risk. In contrast, men require more than twice as much activity—nearly nine hours per week—to achieve comparable benefits.
The study also notes that benefits extend to individuals who start with low levels of physical activity. About 2.5 hours of moderate to vigorous exercise per week was associated with a 22 percent reduction in CHD risk among women and 17 percent among men, underscoring that benefits accrue across a range of activity levels. To reach the same survival advantage from exercise, men would need roughly 1.7 times as much activity as women.
CHD occurs when the arteries supplying the heart become constricted or calcified, limiting blood flow. Risk factors include an unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, and smoking. The findings emphasize that benefits from physical activity are evident even at lower volumes and intensities, reinforcing public health messages that exercise is protective for heart health at many levels.
The research also explored outcomes for individuals with existing heart disease. Women who participate in moderate to vigorous activity for 51 minutes per week showed a lower risk of mortality, while men required about 85 minutes to observe a similar survival benefit. This supports the overall conclusion that gender differences influence the dose of exercise needed for heart-health gains.
These patterns held across multiple analyses, suggesting that the more days per week a person is active, the lower their risk of developing CHD, independent of gender. The authors propose several biological factors that may explain the observed differences, including hormonal influences and variations in muscle fiber composition. Estrogen, for example, can promote fat metabolism and provide vascular protection, while women generally possess more endurance-oriented muscle fibers. In contrast, men tend to have muscle fibers optimized for power and speed, which may affect how cardiovascular adaptations occur with training.
The study did not dispute the overall cardiovascular benefits of exercise for men and women; rather, it highlighted that the same heart-health gains may be achieved with different weekly exercise targets by gender. These findings could inform personalized exercise recommendations and public health guidelines, encouraging tailored activity prescriptions to optimize CHD prevention across diverse populations.
