If you have a prostate gland, this blog is for you! However, unlike our usual prostate-oriented blogs, this one is mainly about your heart. (Stay tuned for the end, when I bring the prostate back into the picture.)

How much exercise do you need?

There’s little excuse for not knowing how much moderate-to-vigorous activity you should be getting each week. Three major global organizations (American Heart Association, World Health Organization, European Society of Cardiology) completely agree on the following guideline: All adults should exercise 150 minutes per week.

By “exercise”, they mean moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) that gets your heart rate up and keeps it up while working out. This is called cardio exercise. Cardio exercise includes things like accelerated walking, jogging, running, cycling, swimming, dancing, jumping rope, etc.

If I ask you right now if you adhere to MVPA guideline, what would you honestly say? Until recently, it was hard to know if people’s self-reports are accurate. Now, however, wearable fitness trackers make it impossible to squirm away from the truth—and to safely maximize workout benefits.

The fact that there’s a big demand for fitness monitors shows that adults increasingly value their cardiovascular health and longevity. Besides their individual value, these devices are doing a big favor for scientists because they can now gather objective data.

Sex differences and exercise

In fact, a November 2025 study published in the journal Nature Cardiovascular Research made use of such device-reported data to correlate the actual impact of exercise on the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).^[i] The study involved 80,243 individuals with no CHD who wore a recording device, as well as 5,169 patients with CHD who also wore a recording device.

The authors discovered significant differences between men and women. It had already been demonstrated that globally, women lag behind men in terms of sufficient physical activity (PA) according to the guidelines; for women it’s 33.8% insufficient PA but for men it’s 28.7%.^[ii] And yet, the authors found that women have lower CHD risk than men. Here are some key points:

• Nearly half (48.46%) of those without CHD met the minimum weekly MVPA guideline of 150 min.
• Only 30.51% of those with CHD made this minimum.
• Females had less adherence to the guideline, with lower MVPA duration and intensity.
• However, when both men and women added 30 more minutes per week, women’s drop in CHD risk was greater than men’s, “indicating a stronger protective effect in females,” write the authors.
• For those who met the minimum 150 min./week guideline, “females experienced a 22% relative reduction in CHD incidence risk…whereas males showed a 17% reduction,” which is statistically significant.

In other words, when women work out, they benefit more greatly than men who do the same amount of activity, in terms of reducing their risk of CHD.

Here’s one of the more astonishing calculations reported by the authors: “… to achieve a reduction in CHD risk of 30% … males need to engage in 530 [min/week] of MVPA, while only 250 [min/week] was required for females.”

Men, hearts, prostates

This study should be a wake-up call for men, especially those with a family history of cardiovascular disease, or those who are—relatively speaking—couch potatoes. For the sake of your heart’s health, we recommend creating a cardio workout routine that you can stick with for at least 150 minutes per week. Also, check out other lifestyle habits to protect your ticker.

And, as we have posted in our blogs many times, what’s good for the heart is good for the prostate. Maintaining healthy weight through good plant-forward nutrition and exercise generates a non-inflammatory physical environment. This is an investment in lowering the risks of developing cancer, including prostate cancer.

Everyone, regardless of sex, benefits from cardio exercise. If the above study is correct, guys need it even more! Don’t wait. Get up and get moving now. Your heart (and your prostate) will thank you.

NOTE: This content is solely for purposes of information and does not substitute for diagnostic or medical advice. Talk to your doctor if you are experiencing pelvic pain, or have any other health concerns or questions of a personal medical nature.

References

[i] Chen J, Wang Y, Zhong Z, Chen X et al. Sex differences in the association of wearable accelerometer-derived physical activity with coronary heart disease incidence and mortality. Nat Cardiovasc Res. 2025 Nov;4(11):1539-1549.
[ii] Strain T, Flaxman S, Guthold R, Semenova E et al. National, regional, and global trends in insufficient physical activity among adults from 2000 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 507 population-based surveys with 5·7 million participants. Lancet Glob Health. 2024 Aug;12(8):e1232-e1243.