Do Women Have More Breathing Challenges Than Men During Intense Exercise?

January 7, 2024

by Cathe Friedrich

When it comes to fitness, female athletes can go stride for stride with the guys in many athletic endeavors. However, women and men are physiologically different in some respects. For example, new research reveals an intriguing difference in how the two genders respond to exercise. It showed that when exercise intensity ramps up – women may face greater breathing challenges than men.

The study revealed that as the pace of exercise quickens, female runners labor more with breathing compared to men. This gender gap in lung function under stress is sparking deeper dives into our physiology. Scientists are now exploring how male and female airways operate differently during exercise, injury recovery, and illness.

Early theories suggest female hormones, airway size, inflammation regulation, and even nervous system signaling could all play a part in these differences in respiratory physiology under stress. These potential factors have researchers re-examining conditions like exercise-induced asthma and COPD through a gender lens.

Breathing Battles: Unveiling Gender Dynamics in Exercise

According to Dr. Paolo Dominelli from the University of Waterloo and the results of his team’s research, women tend to work harder to move the same amount of air in and out of their lungs compared to men.

He explains that women’s airways are narrower, which creates more resistance as air flows through. So even though a woman might breathe in the same volume of air as a man, a female’s respiratory muscles must work harder to move that air due to tighter airways.

The findings provide useful insights into the subtle variations in breathing biology across genders. It reveals how scientists are still uncovering new layers of complexity in fundamental processes, like air exchange during times of stress, including exercise.

In the Lab: A Fascinating Experiment on Breathing Disparities

To explore the differences between men’s and women’s breathing, Dr. Dominelli and his team designed an interesting experiment. They had 6 men, and 5 women exercise on stationary bikes while breathing through a special mouthpiece. The mouthpiece was hooked up to a big bag filled with different air mixtures.

During one exercise session, the participants breathed room air. In the second session, they inhaled a mixture of helium and oxygen. During the sessions, researchers slowly encouraged the volunteers to pedal harder and harder to push to raise their breathing rate.

At maximum exertion, everyone was huffing and puffing! By switching up what was in the airbags, the scientists could simulate how people breathe when air flows normally versus when passageways narrow. Although a tough workout for the participants, these real-world tests allowed the team to quantify how men and women engage their respiratory muscles differently during exercise.

Physiological Peculiarities: How Women and Men Respond to Intense Workouts

Their findings? When breathing the helium blend, men and women had similar experiences – they required about the same effort to inhale and exhale during exercise. But things changed when everyone breathed regular room air. Suddenly the women were working a good bit harder to breathe than the men.

Studies show that women have airways that are 26 to 35 percent smaller, by some estimates. Dr. Dominelli believes this shows that women’s narrower airways cause airflow to become more turbulent as they breathe heavily. Picture air like cars on a highway – when things get narrower and more crowded, everything slows down and takes more effort! The same goes for oxygen molecules trying to make their way through our respiratory system.

So, at rest, airway size doesn’t matter too much. But when we start huffing and puffing during physical activity, the extra resistance in women’s airways forces them to rely more on their breathing muscles compared to men. It’s fascinating how our anatomy can shape something as basic as taking in that next breath of air.

Variability Matters: Debunking Airway Size Stereotypes

Dr. Dominelli is quick to point out that airway size can vary quite a bit from person to person, regardless of gender. So, while the study found average differences between men and women as groups, we can’t assume every individual follows this trend. Overall, men tend to have larger airways compared to women, there’s still a wide range of airway diameters within each gender.

So, while his team spotted a pattern, Dr. Dominelli acknowledges the picture is more complicated when you get down to specific individuals. Just because you’re male or female doesn’t dictate your exact airway size or breathing biology. There’s no simple formula we can apply, as humans vary in the make-up of their airways.

The takeaway is that sex-based averages exist when it comes to airway anatomy and respiratory effort. But individual mileage may vary! We each bring a degree of complexity and variability even within the broader patterns.

Conclusion

Breathing – we all do it, though likely without much thought. Yet this new research highlights that even with something as innate as how we breathe, meaningful differences exist between the sexes.

While we need more work to fully understand the implications, it seems that during strenuous activity, women labor a bit harder to move air in and out. Narrower airways create added resistance when we’re huffing and puffing during a HIIT workout. These findings suggest interesting patterns at the population level that warrant a closer look – especially for conditions like asthma. Women with asthma could experience more airway resistance during exercise than men due to their narrower airways.

As the scientists point out, this is just one glimpse into the intricate biology underlying our physiology. There are surely more discoveries ahead that will reshape our conceptions of health and disease for both sexes. For now, the revelations invite us to appreciate the masterful mechanics of our lungs and the elegant complexity of human physiology. Even in the simple act of taking a breath, marvels abound.

References:

Science X. Breathing during exercise is harder for women than men. Medicalxpress.com. Published April 27, 2020. Accessed December 28, 2023. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-harder-women-men.html
The FASEB Journal. The FASEB Journal. Published online May 18, 2021. doi:https://doi.org/10.1096/(issn)1530-6860.
“Sex, gender and the pulmonary physiology of exercise.” https://err.ersjournals.com/content/31/163/210074.
“Anatomy, Airway – StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf.” 25 Jul. 2023, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459258/.
“Smaller Lung Airways Increase Women’s Risks for COPD.” https://4rai.com/2022/07/15/smaller-lung-airways-increase-women-s-risks-for-copd/.