For Women, More Long-Term Health Benefits From Less Gym Time: US Study

California: A recent study conducted by the Smidt Heart Institute in California has found that women may get more long-term health benefits from regular physical activity compared to men, and even when they exercise less.

The institute conducted a long-term study with 4,00,000 participants, tracking their health data for over two decades — 1997 to 2019 — and comparing physical activity levels with mortality rates. The study found that after the same stint of physical activity, female individuals gain greater long-term health benefits than males.

The research found that women who were engaged in some form of physical activity each week, regardless of intensity or duration, experienced reduction in all-cause mortality risk of up to 24% compared to inactive women. But men required a higher level of activity to achieve the same.

However, they also found female participants did less physical exercise like brisk walking or cycling and weight training, or core work than male participants.

“Although women seem to do less leisure-time exercise, their mortality risk is more steeply reduced for any given weekly amount or frequency of exercise,” reported The Guardian quoting physiologist Emmanuel Stamatakis.