Exercise Does More For Women Than For Men

Careful word choices here: Geezer is not suggesting that exercise does more for women than men do (for women), although that may well be true. Rather, he is merely passing along some research results that suggests that exercise does more for women than it does for men, at least as far as cholesterol is concerned. How do we know? The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology reports on research conducted at the University of North Carolina and Baylor University, where a long-term study of over 8,700 middle-aged men and women provided
race- and gender- specific data on the cholesterol effects of physical
activity. The researchers found that over a 12 year period, all individuals who increased their
exercise by about 180 metabolic units per week (equivalent to an
additional hour of mild or 30 minutes of moderate activity per week) had decreased levels of triglycerides and increased levels of the
"good" HDL cholesterol. But when they looked for statistically significant decreases in
the "bad" LDL cholesterol, they were found only in women, with
particularly strong effects in menopausal women and African-American
women.
Read more from ASBMB.