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LIFESTORY SEPTEMBER 2, 2022
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This might sound hard to believe, but it is true: any random person could walk up to the windows of a nursery and gaze in at the newborns within and predict at a glance which ones will outlive the others — and do so fairly accurately. All the information that person would need could be provided by things like booties and little stocking caps. Babies wearing pink will in most cases live longer than babies wearing blue. All over the world, women live longer than men. There is no nation where men have a longer life expectancy, although there are wide variations in the female advantage, ranging from a few months to a full decade. Why does this gender disparity exist? There are answers, some of them reasonably well-established, others a little shaky, as well as plenty of unanswered questions and unexplored theories. Some of the reasons can be chalked up to four words: boys will be boys. A comparative study published in the Journal of Human Stress a few years ago noted higher death rates for men directly linked to smoking-related lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and stroke, along with more deaths from accidents, suicide, and cirrhosis of the liver compared to women. They noted that working at hazardous jobs, engaging in adventurous and risky macho behaviors while acting unafraid, and drinking and smoking - even excessively - are accepted and even encouraged in our society among males. That means that some of the disparity is largely social rather than biological or medical, and is therefore fixable and avoidable. On the other hand, there is evidence of biological differences that give women what our illustrated lady to the right suggests: a green light. The very hormones and chromosomes that make us male and female dictate matters as mundane as where the body stores fat. Women tend to have more fat directly under the skin (subcutaneous fat), while men have more fat surrounding organs (visceral fat), which, unfortunately for guys, tends to be a predictor of cardiovascular disease. There is a gender stereotype we’re about to paint that relates to studies of life expectancy. As the stereotypical scene goes, a husband and wife wake up one morning feeling sick. The husband groans for half an hour before calling in sick and curling up under the covers in the fetal Please see MEN & WOMEN page 10
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