Men may need double the weekly exercise to protect their hearts: study

150 minutes of exercise may not be enough to protect heart health.

A new study has raised questions about the long-established benchmark of 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, suggesting that this baseline may not be enough to protect the heart — and that men may need significantly more weekly activity than women to achieve the same cardiovascular benefits.

The findings, published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, challenge the uniform exercise targets currently promoted worldwide.

The WHO recommends that adults complete 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous exercise each week, in addition to muscle-strengthening workouts. However, the new data indicates that gender-specific targets could be more effective.

Researchers tracked the activity patterns of more than 85,000 adults in the UK over seven years, using wearable devices to measure how much moderate to vigorous activity they performed. They then compared exercise duration with the risk of developing heart disease or dying from cardiac causes.

Women without existing heart disease who exercised for around 250 minutes per week reduced their risk by close to 30 per cent.

Men, however, needed more than 500 minutes for similar protection.

Even at the 150-minute benchmark, women saw a clearer reduction in heart disease risk compared to men. Among people who already had heart disease, women who logged 250 minutes a week lowered their risk of death more sharply than men — who again required almost twice as much physical activity to match the advantage.

The study points to physiological differences that may explain this gap.

Women tend to metabolise fuel during exercise differently, using fat more efficiently as an energy source. Their muscles also include a higher proportion of fibres that tolerate sustained effort and oxidative stress, improving efficiency during aerobic workouts.

Men, in comparison, tend to have muscle composition geared towards shorter bursts of power, which may demand more time spent exercising each week to produce the same protective effect.

After menopause, however, women’s natural advantage in this area appears to narrow as hormonal differences decrease.

Moderate to vigorous activity refers to any routine that raises the heart rate enough to accelerate breathing and induce sweating — the level of exertion where speaking in long sentences becomes difficult.

While the findings suggest that more exercise could deliver greater heart protection, the researchers note that most adults still struggle to meet even the existing 150-minute guideline.

They caution that formal recommendations are formed by reviewing multiple studies, not a single piece of research. Even so, the study reinforces one clear message: regular aerobic exercise remains one of the strongest tools for preventing heart disease — and increasing duration may provide an extra layer of protection, especially for men.