In a variety of topics/statistics, women life expectancy is significantly greater than men. Is there any particular immune system that is in work?
In: Biology
Heart Disease
About 1 in 4 men will die from heart disease generally in the form of a heart attack while only 1 in 5 women will die from it.
While 1 in 4 vs 1 in 5 sounds pretty close, its enough to pull the average lifespan of men down by a couple years and create the gap you see.
There are other factors like accidents and suicides which influence the younger age groups of both sides significantly, but once you start looking at older groups (45+) the chance of a man having a heart attack becomes sooo high that it skews the entire average.
Why are men so much more likely to have a heart attack? It seems the research is still open on that
A number of reasons that all contribute… men are more likely to be killed in war or on the job; men are less likely to proactively seek medical attention for an issue (this chest pain is probably just indigestion) or see a doctor regularly; men are more likely to eat more, less healthy foods (ie. ordering the steak when wife orders a salad); hormonal differences that contribute to different or worse outcomes from various potentially deadly illnesses/conditions.
There’s a variety of studies that point to different factors. Typically men are taller which puts more strain on the body’s muscles and organs (taller people tend not to live as long as shorter people) During the menstrual cycle the heart rate increase women experience is the equivalent of moderate exercise so women typically have healthier hearts and lower blood pressure. The effects Testosterone in men which is produced in abundance during puberty has been linked to heart disease and colon cancers while estrogen the female sex hormone is actually an antioxidant which flushes the body of things that might cause stress on cells.
Lifestyle choices that some people claim (I.e. heavier drinking, over eating, smoking) have been debunked by studying different cultures, for instance Russian women out drink men but still live longer.
Life expectancy is an average. A lot of dumb guys get killed young doing risky shit and that brings the average down for men. Ask the same question of men and women at 50 years old and I bet the life expectancy difference is minimal.
Edit: and just to be more brutal on male stupidity, and as others have pointed out, older men wait longer to get treatment for medical conditions. Women live longer (mostly) because they don’t do as much stupid shit.
A mix of how bodies are built and socialized behaviour.
Womens bodies are (very broadly speaking) built ‘sturdier’ which includes several internal organs like the heart (another commenter already mentioned the increased rate of cardiac arrest in men). Why? Some theories belive to adapt to more strainous things like childbirth but the why is still being researched and thus unknown.
The second factor is socialized behavior and culture. Male culture (and accordingly also how men act) often encourages risky behaviour (‘real men are risk takers/drink/dont know pain etc. ‘) while deemphasizing seeking help (its often seen as unmanly to see a doctor, ask for help, complaign about issues ir not being able to do something) both of which lead to a higher rate in sever injury (which even if not fatal decrease your life exoectancy statistically).
Both seem to be factors as studies have remained relatively consistent in womens higher life expectancy when they try to vary each factor. But given the complexity of how both factors are interlinked, I would take any statement emphasizing one over the other completely with a solid grain of salt.
Hope that was helpfull 🙂
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Us men are idiots and kill ourselves off doing stupid shit with far higher frequency at younger age.
I think there’s also higher incidents of heart related issues often associated with stress because we are idiots and hold everything in.
Maybe the question should be “Why do men not ~~want to~~ live as long as their wives?”
Testosterone works the heart and men’s hearts do more work to pump blood to more tissue. And there are some genes on the X chromosome that help with the immune system. If a man is missing it/has a defective version he is just going to be missing that part. But the chances of a woman having 2 defective copies isn’t very high.
You can also add to the various good answers the fact that women have additional copies of certain genes since they have an X chromosome and men only have a Y. Added to that, some women have tetrachromacy where they have four types of cone cells in their eye instead of the usual three and thus can see more colours than men.
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