Women benefit more from regular exercise than men

Likewise, when it came to muscle-strengthening activity, such as weightlifting or core body work, men reached their peak benefit from doing three sessions per week while women needed just one session.

Women who did strength training saw their risk of cardiovascular-related deaths fall by 30 per cent reduced risk, compared to 11 per cent for men.

Dr Martha Gulati, director of Preventive Cardiology at the Smidt Heart Institute said:  “Women have historically and statistically lagged behind men in engaging in meaningful exercise.

“The beauty of this study is learning that women can get more out of each minute of moderate to vigorous activity than men do. It’s an incentivizing notion that we hope women will take to heart.”

The authors said multiple factors, including variations in anatomy and physiology, may account for the differences in outcomes between the sexes.

‘Pioneering research will motivate women’

For example, men often have increased lung capacity, larger hearts, more lean-body mass, and a greater proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibres than women.

As a result, women may use added respiratory, metabolic, and strength demands to conduct the same movement and in turn reap greater health rewards.

The NHS currently recommends that adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity a week

Dr Christie Albert, of the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute added: “I am hopeful that this pioneering research will motivate women who are not currently engaged in regular physical activity to understand that they are in a position to gain tremendous benefit for each increment of regular exercise they are able to invest in their longer-term health.”

The findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).