W

omen generally exercise less than men do, but new research suggests they see greater health benefits from it. A national study found that women who exercised regularly — at least 2½ hours of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week — had a 24% lower risk of dying over the study period compared with women who didn’t exercise. By contrast, men who exercised regularly were 15% less likely to die than men who didn’t exercise. Men also needed more exercise than women to achieve the same health benefits: Five hours of moderate or vigorous exercise per week reduced their risk of dying by 18% compared with men who didn’t exercise. But just 140 minutes of weekly exercise had the same effect among women. “Women got the same benefit at lower levels of physical activity,” said a co-author of the study, Dr. Martha Gulati, the director of preventive cardiology at Cedars-Sinai’s Smidt Heart Institute in Los Angeles. Women who exercised regularly also had a 36% lower risk of dying from a cardiovascular issue such as a heart attack or stroke, the study found, whereas men who exercised regularly had a 14% lower risk. The findings were published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The researchers analyzed the self-reported exercise habits of more than 412,000 men and women who participated in the National Health Interview Survey from 1997 to 2017.