Women Matched Men’s Peak Exercise Benefit in Far Less Weekly Time

CATEGORY: WOMEN’S HEALTH

Women who did regular leisure-time physical activity had a 24% lower risk of dying from any cause than women who were inactive, while regularly active men had a 15% lower risk than inactive men, in a study of 412,413 U.S. adults published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.¹

39,935 Deaths Tracked Through the National Death Index

The researchers drew on the National Health Interview Survey, a long-running U.S. government health survey, covering adults interviewed between 1997 and 2017. Participants (55% women, average age about 44) reported how often, how long, and how hard they exercised in their free time, and whether they did muscle-strengthening activity. Those answers were linked to the National Death Index, the national register of deaths, through 2019—nearly five million person-years of follow-up, during which 39,935 participants died, 11,670 from cardiovascular causes (heart disease and stroke). The study is observational—it tracked what people reported and what later happened to them—so it shows an association, not proof that exercise caused the difference.¹

Cardiovascular Death 36% Lower in Women, 14% in Men

Regular aerobic activity—meeting the widely cited mark of 150 minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous movement such as brisk walking—was linked to a 24% lower risk of death from any cause in women and 15% in men, compared with doing no leisure-time activity. The gap was wider for cardiovascular death: 36% lower in women versus 14% lower in men.¹ About a third of women (32.5%) met that mark, compared with 43% of men. The study was designed to test whether exercise benefits differ by sex, and the difference between women and men was statistically significant.¹

Women Matched Men’s 18% at 140 Minutes Weekly

When the researchers plotted risk against weekly minutes, the curves for the two sexes looked different. Men’s risk of death kept falling until about 300 minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous activity, where it bottomed out at roughly 18% lower. Women reached that same 18% reduction at about 140 minutes a week—less than half the time—and their risk kept edging down to a maximum of about 24% at 300 minutes. A similar pattern appeared with vigorous activity such as running: women matched men’s peak benefit at about 57 minutes a week versus 110 for men. For muscle-strengthening exercise, regular participation was linked to 19% lower mortality in women and 11% in men, with women reaching their peak at roughly one session a week and men at about three.¹

Men Start With More Muscle and Larger Hearts

The authors point to known physiological differences. Men, on average, start with more muscle mass, larger hearts and lungs, and greater aerobic capacity, so a given workout is a smaller relative challenge for a man’s body than for a woman’s—and the body adapts in proportion to the challenge, much as the person who finds a flight of stairs harder work gets the bigger training effect from climbing it. Two caveats: activity was self-reported rather than measured with a device, and people who exercise may differ in other ways the researchers could not fully account for.¹

In UK Biobank, Women Reached 30% at 250 Minutes

Other research points the same way. In a UK Biobank study that measured activity with wrist monitors, not self-reports, about 250 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity a week was linked to 30% lower risk of coronary heart disease—narrowed arteries feeding the heart—in women, a reduction men reached only near 530 minutes.² A separate U.S. cohort found recommended activity levels linked to 52% lower cardiovascular death in women, with no clear reduction in men.³

Key Takeaways

• In 412,413 U.S. adults, regular leisure-time exercise was linked to a 24% lower risk of death in women and 15% in men, compared with inactivity; for cardiovascular death, 36% and 14%.
• Women reached the level of benefit men got from about 300 minutes a week at roughly 140 minutes a week; for strength training, about one session a week in women matched about three in men.
• The study is observational and relied on self-reported activity, so it shows association rather than cause.

References

1. Ji H, Gulati M, Huang TY, et al. Sex Differences in Association of Physical Activity With All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2024;83(8):783–793. link
2. Chen J, Wang Y, Zhong Z, et al. Sex differences in the association of wearable accelerometer-derived physical activity with coronary heart disease incidence and mortality. Nature Cardiovascular Research. 2025;4(11):1539–1549. link.
3. He A, Wang Y, Du C, et al. Sex differences in the association of physical activity patterns with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a prospective cohort study from NHANES 2007–2018. Scientific Reports. 2025;15(1):22197. link.