There’s No Gender Equality in Heart Health

If you think a quick jog or a few gym sessions a week will keep your heart in top shape, you might want to think again. Especially if you’re a man. New research suggests men might not be so lucky in that regard and may have to exercise twice as much as women for a healthy cardiovascular system.

When It Comes to a Healthy Heart, Sex Matters

A large study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research examined how much exercise men and women need to lower their risk of heart disease. Researchers tracked more than 85,000 adults from the UK Biobank – people who didn’t have heart disease at the start – and followed them for years. Instead of asking people to report their workouts, participants wore devices such as fitness trackers that recorded how much they really moved throughout the day.

After nearly eight years of follow-up, the difference between men and women was a surprise. Women who exercised a few hours a week saw major heart benefits. But for men, it took almost twice as much activity to reach the same level of protection.

According to the report, women who got about four hours of moderate-to-vigorous activity each week reduced their risk of heart disease by around 30%. Men, however, needed closer to nine hours a week for the same benefit.

The study also looked at deaths from coronary heart disease, the type that can cause heart attacks. Women who met standard exercise guidelines of about 150 minutes a week were a whopping 70% less likely to die from it. For men, the reduction was much smaller, at only about 19%.

Currently, major health organizations like the World Health Organization and the American Heart Association recommend the same amount of exercise for everyone: at least 150 minutes of moderate activity (like brisk walking) or 75 minutes of vigorous activity (like running) per week.

The researchers didn’t pinpoint exactly why the results differ by sex, but they suspect biological and hormonal factors could play a role. Women naturally produce more estrogen, which helps keep blood vessels flexible and may influence how the heart responds to physical activity. Men and women also tend to store fat differently and have different body compositions, which could affect how exercise impacts their cardiovascular system.

“While it is widely recognized that the female heart is smaller than the male heart, it has long been ignored that it also has a different microstructural architecture,” a report published by PubMed Central explained. “On average, the mass of the adult female heart ranges from 230 to 280 g and is about 26% lighter than the male heart, which varies from 280 to 340 g (Gray, 1878). For both women and men, the mass of the heart continues to increase with age, and female hearts remain consistently smaller than male hearts.”

Women also have a higher resting heart rate than men, the report continued, “but their hearts take a long time from contraction to relaxation.”

Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel spoke about the study on America’s Newsroom and said that men have higher levels of testosterone, which is "bad for cholesterol," and tend to build up fat "in the wrong places" in the gut, leading to inflammation. Plus, he said of men, "We smoke more, we drink more, we don’t exercise as much. All of that puts us at risk for heart disease."

The study’s findings add to what doctors have long observed, that men and women often experience heart disease differently. Women tend to develop it later in life, sometimes after menopause when estrogen levels drop. Men often develop it earlier.

“Our findings underscore the value of sex-specific tailored CHD [coronary heart disease] prevention strategies using wearable devices, which may help bridge the ‘gender gap’ by motivating females to engage in physical activity,” the authors of the study noted.

For the study, the average age was around 61, and 57.3% of the participants were women. The mortality part of the study had an average age of 66, and 30% were women.

Heart disease remains the world’s top killer, ending nearly 18 million lives each year according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, it causes one out of every five deaths.