Strength training boosts longevity, mood and metabolism as it builds muscle : Shots

Strength training is good for everyone, but women who train regularly get a significantly higher boost in longevity than men.

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Gary Yeowell/Getty Images

Strength training is good for everyone, but women who train regularly get a significantly higher boost in longevity than men.

Gary Yeowell/Getty Images

Resistance training does more than help us build strong muscles.

A new study finds women who do strength training exercises two to three days a week are more likely to live longer and have a lower risk of death from heart disease, compared to women who do none.

“We were incredibly impressed by the finding,” says study author Martha Gulati, who is also the director of preventive cardiology at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles.

Of the 400,000 people included in the study, only 1 in 5 women did regular weight training. But those who did, saw tremendous benefits.

“What surprised us the most was the fact that women who do muscle strengthening had a reduction in their cardiovascular mortality by 30%,” Gulati says. “We don’t have many things that reduce mortality in that way.”

Strength training is also good for bones, joints, mood and metabolic health. And at a time when many women focus on aerobic activity and hesitate to do weight training, the findings add to the evidence that a combination of both types of exercise is powerful medicine. “Both should be prescribed,” Gulati says.

The findings are part of a larger study, published in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which evaluated the differences in the effects of exercise between men and women.

While the study finds that even small doses of exercise are beneficial for everyone, the data show that women need less exercise than men to get the same gains in longevity.

Women who did moderate intensity exercise, such as brisk walking, five times a week, reduced their risk of premature death by 24%, compared to 18% for men.

“The take home message is – let’s start moving,” says Eric Shiroma, a prevention-focused researcher at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, which provided grant support for the research..

It’s not exactly clear what drives the variance between sexes, but there are physiological differences between men and women, and differences in heart disease risks, too.

People born female have less muscle and lower aerobic capacity in general. Also, women have more capillaries feeding part of their muscles, Shiroma says. The findings show women need to do less exercise to change their baseline of aerobic and muscular strength. “It might be that this relative increase in strength [in women compared to men] is what’s driving this difference in benefit,” he says.

The results show a little can go a long way. “The benefits start as soon as you start moving,” Shiroma says.

It’s increasingly common to see female weight lifters and body builders on social media, and many gyms and work-out studios now incorporate weight training into many of their classes and offerings. But, given that about 80% of women in the study said they don’t participate in regular weight training, there’s still a lot of hesitancy.

Ann Martin says her mood improves with resistance training. “It gets your blood flowing,” she says. “It feels good.”

Deb Cutler/Ann Martin

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Deb Cutler/Ann Martin

“I was always the awkward one in gym class back in school days,” says Ann Martin, 69, of Wilmington, Del. She shied away from gyms and weight-training machines. Martin has always been a walker, but she realized she needed to build more strength, so last year she started working out with a trainer to learn how to use the equipment. “It’s fun now,” she says. “I can feel my muscles getting stronger.”

Strength training can be intimidating, Shiroma says. “But it’s not all bodybuilders trying to lift super amounts of weight.” He says there are many ways to incorporate resistance training into your life.

All activities that require your…