How your heart responds to exercise depends largely on whether you are a man or a woman, according to a new study funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) and presented at the British Cardiovascular Society conference in Manchester today. And older male endurance athletes may be losing the race for heart health, as the researchers from Barts Heart Centre at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, St George’s Hospital and University College London found their vascular age to be almost ten years older than their chronological age, whereas the hearts of female athletes showed no such signs of accelerated ageing.
Over 300 competitive “masters” athletes in their forties and older, all of whom had trained for running, cycling, swimming and
