Should exercise guidelines be updated?

I read a pretty interesting article in the National Geographic on “Why women may get more from exercise than men”.

Exercise guidelines by the American Heart Association states that people should get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise (or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise) per week. A study conducted by the Journal of American College of Cardiology of over 400,000 adults in 2024 revealed that regular physical activity was associated with 24% lower risk of mortality in women and 15% in men (150 minutes exercise equated to 22% lower risk of coronary heart disease for women and 17% for men).

Women reached the mortality benefit at 140 minutes of exercise and men at 300 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week (for both aerobic and resistance exercise). When exercise increased to 250 minutes for women, risk dropped to 30% and 530 minutes for men. Most likely the difference could be due to estrogen, which can increase the effects of exercise in the blood vessels to the heart by improving blood flow through encouraging growth of new blood vessels.

The key take-away from this article for me is that, if you can work your way up to it physically and fit it into your schedule, there is a lot of benefit for you to do more than just the recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate (75 minutes of vigorous) exercise per week. 150 minutes is great! But 250 minutes for us women is probably not too hard to obtain for a bunch of us and we can get even greater benefits from more exercise!!