The Know Daily - Tuesday 20 February

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Seven California condor birds were recently released into the wild in the US state following a successful breeding programme at Oregon Zoo. The birds - the largest in North America - are classified as critically endangered, but it’s hoped that recovery programmes such as these will help their numbers soar.

🎾 New evidence on exercise

Women benefit more than men from the same amount of regular exercise, a new study has found. 

Go on…
The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, found that women gain greater benefits from exercise compared with men, even when putting in less time and effort. Researchers followed more than 400,000 adults aged 27 to 61 over two decades, finding that women needed only half the amount of exercise as men to experience similar health benefits, said CNN.

Do you have an example?
Sure. Women who exercised for 140 minutes per week saw a 24% reduction in their risk of premature death, while men needed to commit 300 minutes per week to achieve a similar level of benefit.

What’s behind this difference? 
According to researchers, it’s partly to do with the differences between men’s and women’s bodies. Men typically have larger hearts, lungs and more muscle mass than women, who typically need to adapt their respiratory and cardiovascular systems more in order to perform similar types of exercise, said MedicalNewsToday. And this greater need to adapt means that women are poised to gain “tremendous benefits” from exercise, and to a greater degree than men, explained Dr Susan Cheng, a cardiologist involved in the study . 

Why does this matter?
The findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that exercise regimes should be tailored according to sex, due to differences in “hormones, physiology and biomechanics”, explained The Times. 

Researchers also hope that the findings could help address the exercise gender gap, reported Euronews. Co-author Dr. Martha Gulati said that while women have “historically and statistically lagged behind men in engaging in meaningful exercise”, the study showed that women “can get more out of each minute of moderate to vigorous activity than men do”. “It’s an incentivising notion,” Gulati added.