WHY WOMEN LIVE LONGER THAN MEN

Women outlive men by 3-5 years in almost every country in the world and we think looking for physiological factors to explain this difference is a huge waste of time. We believe the studies that cite as much as a 5 year increase in life expectancy by engaging in meaningful levels of social activity offer an easy way to explain the difference. Women are naturally more social than men and that's why they tend to live longer and healthier lives.

Throughout human history women have banded together for protection and mutual support. They "nurse" each other in times of illness and even help each other tend for their young. They boost each others confidence, keep each others secrets, laugh and cry together and while their non-stop chatter can make men crazy it helps them keep each other well.

According to UCLA neuroscientist Shelley Taylor, "women are much more social in the way they cope with stress, men are more likely to deal with stress with a 'fight or flight' reaction...with aggression or withdrawal. But aggression and withdrawal can take a physiological toll and friendship brings comfort that mitigates the ill effects of stress. That difference alone contributes to the gender difference in longevity."

We agree with the good doctor largely because her opinion runs parallel to the research we did into "Broken Heart Syndrome," which was centered around a massive Harvard Study involving 1,000,000 people (500,000 married couples) that offered scientific proof that people really do die of a broken heart. You can read the entire article here: http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/news/broken-heart

Those of you unfamiliar with the study may be surprised to learn that men are more likely to die of broken heart syndrome than women: "Over the nine years [of the study], 383,480 husbands (74 percent) and 347,269 wives (67 percent) were hospitalized at least once, and 252,557 husbands (49 percent) and 156,004 wives (30 percent) died. The mean age of men in the study was 75 years and the mean age of women was 72 years."

Beverly Fehr of the University of Manitoba says, "When a romantic relationship ends, a woman still has other sources of intimacy — her friends — and that provides her with another source of support." Ohio State University psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser puts it this way, "When a man loses his primary female partner, he's in trouble."

Friendships have a profound affect on the health of both genders. Men and women who report loneliness die earlier, get sick more often and don't deal with stress as well as those with a strong support network. But men rely more heavily on their wives to ward off the health effects of loneliness. Married men live significantly longer and healthier lives than bachelors or widowers. Married women, by contrast, are only slightly better off than unmarried women or widows when it comes to health and most research cites the support they receive from friendships outside their marriage as the difference. Men often have strong support networks available to them as well, but they are far less likely to rely on them.

We could complicate all of this by by attempting to cite the link between the hormone oxytcocin and friendship, especially for women...but we prefer the more "gut level" response most women use to describe the relationship they have with other women as opposed to men. Many say, "you can bear your soul to another woman and you can't do that with a man, even your husband." There is even strong evidence many women feel that during times of deep emotional stress men often make things worse because, "they don't know when to stop giving advice."

Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, who studies friendship and health, calls social support "the most reliable psychological indicator of immune response that has been found." Even a man can support that finding...   Tom LeDuc

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