Can breathing during difficult exercises be harder for women than for men? Find out!

We all know just how beneficial exercising regularly can be for our physical health as well as mental health. Exercise can help keep us in shape, can reduce stress levels and can also promote a positive body image. And while there isn't any exercise that both men and women can't opt for even though they belong to different genders, turns out, gender can bring about a difference when it comes to breathing during the exercise. A new study claims that breathing during difficult exercises is harder for women than for men.

The study also mentions that this could potentially show us how men and women have different health issues when it comes to airway disorders such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). “The amount of work the respiratory muscles have to do to breathe a given volume is greater in women. It is thought that this is due to women having smaller airways than men, which causes the airflow resistance to be higher,” said study researcher Paolo Dominelli.

For the study, the researchers recruited eleven individuals of which six were men and five were women. These participants were asked to opt for two maximal exercise tests in which they had to sit on a stationary exercise cycle and then start exercising while gradually increasing the strain they were putting on their bodies.

The participants were also asked to breathe through a mouthpiece that was attached to a large bag. Now, here's where the tricky part comes in. There were two bags with two different mixtures. While one bag contained only oxygen, the other bag contained a mixture of oxygen and helium. The participants weren't told which bag contained which mixture. They were simply told to start exercising while breathing from one bag.

During this exercise, the researchers also measured the pressure inside the participants' oesophagus by inserting a small tube down their nose. It was found that when they breathed in through the bag containing the helium mixture, there was no difference in their breathing levels. However, when it came to breathing through the oxygen bag, there was a significant difference between that of men and women. Women had to work a lot harder to breathe than men.

This shows that there is a difference in the way the airways between men and women work. Stay tuned for more updates.