Photo credit: The Punch
From time immemorial, women have always been regarded as the weaker
sex, when compared to men. But that seems to be nothing more than a
cliché now as women appear to be increasingly outshining men in several
things.
For example, scientists have proved that women are smarter, more
intelligent, emotionally stronger and they make better leaders. But
beyond these remarkable comparative advantages, it has also been shown
that women live longer than men and the difference could be as high as
10 years.
Interestingly, according to a list of verified 100 oldest people in
the world, compiled between February 1985 and May 2016, there are 94
females and only six males on the list.
And until August 2016 when a 145-year-old man, Mbah Gotho, was
discovered in Indonesia, a French woman, Jeanne Calment had been on
record as the oldest verified person of all time, as she lived for 122
years, 164 days, outliving both her daughter and grandson by several
decades, before she died on August 4, 1997.
Several reasons have been adduced for women’s greater longevity.
From general knowledge, it can easily be assumed that women tend to live
longer because men engage in more risky jobs; women tend to be more
careful in terms of habits and lifestyle, like smoking and drinking and
they are care-givers (mothers) which could make them to be more careful
with their lives. And out of these factors, lifestyle is said to be very
important, especially when it comes to smoking and drinking, but there
is more.
According to a study by Professors Waldron Ingrid and Sebastian
Johnston, they found that women tend to secrete less of the stress
hormones, which would be advantageous for their longevity on the long
run. They argued further that women are more likely to live longer due
to their differing environment, roles and lifestyles compared with men.
They said, “Generally, males are engaged in the more stressful,
physically demanding and hazardous occupations. Also, cigarette
smoking, one of many factors that have distinguished the typical
lifestyle and personal habits of men and women in past years, has been
identified as a major contributor to the difference.
“Beyond that, women are more likely to secure earlier diagnosis
and appropriate treatment for health conditions, including particularly
the serious illnesses and women are less likely to be self-destructive,
be it through suicide or alcoholism, they are also less likely to
engage in acts of violence or to be aggressive and excessive risk
takers.”
But, the founder of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston
University, United States, Dr. Tom Perls, in his post on time.com said
women are more likely to live longer because they usually have some
delay when it comes to having some cardiovascular diseases, like heart
attack and stroke. Whereas, he said men tend to develop such diseases
earlier in life, like in their 50s and 60s while for the women, it could
be in their 80s.
He said, “One reason for that delay in onset of cardiovascular
disease could be that women are relatively iron-deficient compared to
men — especially younger women, those in their late teens and early 20s —
because of menstruation.
“Also, iron plays a very important part in the reactions in our
cells that produce damaging free radicals, which glom onto cell
membranes and DNA, and may translate into aging the cell.”
And in the view of Prof. Thomas Kirkwood, a biologist and the
director of the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University
in England, there are other reasons women live longer than men.
He said with the kind of hardship and stressful work men do, they
tend to drive themselves to an early grave, unlike women who do less
stressful jobs and develop healthier habits than men, as most women
abstain from smoking and drinking.
Some people have actually tied such unhealthy habits in men to the
surge in testosterone, which, according to them, instigate them to
engage in such things, like taking too much alcohol, smoking, which
could lead to higher death rate.
Kirkwood explained that beyond lifestyle and other habits, the
female body has the ability to repair damaged cells in the body, noting
that the reasons for women’s greater longevity are more biological.
He said, “As an experimental gerontologist, I approach this
issue from a wider biological perspective, by looking at other animals.
It turns out that the females of most species live longer than the
males. This phenomenon suggests that the explanation for the difference
within humans might lie deep in our biology.
“Many scientists believe that the aging process is caused by
the gradual buildup of a huge number of individually tiny faults. This
degenerative buildup means that the length of our lives is regulated by
the balance between how fast new damage strikes our cells and how
efficiently this damage is corrected.
“However, there is evidence from studies in rodents that cells
in a female body do repair damage better than in the body of a male and
that surgical removal of the ovaries eliminates this difference.”
He said even though women strive for equality with men, they should
be consoled by the fact that they are less disposable, in relation to
the vital role they play in reproduction and their system is so designed
to withstand the stress of carrying a foetus for such a long time and
then breastfeed afterwards.
He added, “Could it be that women live longer because they are
less disposable in terms of genetic materials than men? This notion, in
fact, makes excellent biological sense. In humans, as in most animal
species, the state of the female body is very important for the success
of reproduction. So, to be less disposable, however, is a blessing that
offers some compensation.”
Beyond these, some researchers from Imperial College School of
Medicine in London, found that women live longer than men because they
have stronger immune system, which helps them to guard against certain
ailments even when they are old.
In the research, led by Dr. Richard Aspinall and Dr. Jeffery
Pido-Lopez, they monitored the volume of white cells in 46 men and
women. They were all aged between 20 and 62 and were all healthy.
At the end of the study, they found that women produce more white
blood cells, which are the cells of the immune system that are involved
in protecting the body against both infectious disease and foreign
invaders, than men.
According to the report, published on Mail Online, even though the
thymus gland producing T-lymphocytes for the immune system produced
fewer cells as the age increased, women still had higher levels of new
T-cells than men of same age with them.
One of the researchers, Pido-Lopez said, “Men are exposed to
more hazardous substances at work and take part in activities that are
more damaging to health, and risk can explain anything from number of
car crash deaths to deaths from colon cancer, but there are probably
other factors such as thymic output that contribute to the difference in
longevity.”
Commenting on the different reasons, a sociologist, Monday
Ahibogwu, also said there are different reasons women live longer than
men, including the fact that men are engaged in stressful jobs than
women.
“You don’t get women driving trucks or doing some very
stressful jobs, so there are a lot of things that women don’t do that
put them in a more relaxed social environment,” which, combined with
other factors, influence their longevity,” he added.
The Punch
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