I think this is a sound assumption. It seems that women in general take care of themselves better than men.
That’s exactly I what I was thinking when I first learned that men actually have a lower life expectancy rate. It’s because in general, they are not as good as women at living a healthy lifestyle.
I remember reading an article about a rural Siberian village whose tiny population was composed nearly totally of elderly widows. What killed the men? Mostly complications from lifetimes of severe alcoholism, a vice culturally inculcated primarily in men.
There is also the fact that men are less likely to seek medical advice for potentially serious complaints then women.
On the other hand, I have heard that when you control for the well-established fact that shorter people tend to live significantly longer irrespective of their sex, the disparity goes way down.
I did not know this. I’m saved…
But then, short people got no reason to… OK, we don’t need to go there.
Is this an established fact? I wonder if that is why Hispanics in the US have longer life expectancies, despite the fact that they tend to be on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale.
Men die earlier for several reasons we know of, and probably many more we don’t.
First, male babies die more. This is true even before they’re born, and continues into childhood. They’re simply more “delicate”, biologically speaking, and we don’t know why. So go be outraged at Mother Nature. She’s a bitch. But that brings your gender divided life expectancy down for males.
Second, testosterone is hard on the heart and arteries. We think this is why men have greater rates of heart disease when you factor out job stress and smoking and other lifestyle factors. This is also why heart disease is something we’re seeing more of in older women. Now that women aren’t dying all willy nilly in childbirth, more of them are getting old enough to live years after menopause. Without all that estrogen, they start to feel the ill effects of testosterone on their heart and arteries. So, again, take it up with that bitch, Mother Nature.
Third, lifestyle factors, already mentioned. Men tend to be more risk takers and with risk taking often comes injury and death. Men are more likely to abuse alcohol and cigarettes. Outside of farms and factories, men are more likely to have sedentary desk jobs, and women jobs where they’re on their feet and moving during the day. Women, even those who work the same hours outside the home as their husbands, do more of the housework, which is exercise. Men tend to have crappier diets, and are less likely to cook healthy foods and home, more likely to use restaurants or prepared foods than women, and more likely to prepare and eat smoked, grilled and high fat meats than vegetables. So take it up with Men.
Fourth, avoidance. Men are more prone to avoiding going to the doctor, putting off or completely ignoring preventative care, and are better at denying failing health when it happens. This is believed to be one reason why married men live longer than unmarried men - their wives nag them into going to the doctor (as well as eating better and exercising more.) So, again, take it up with Men.
The one group of people who you really don’t have a leg to stand on playing the blame game is medical researchers. They’re all over men’s health issues, and have historically gone too far into assuming “people” means “men” and extrapolating research on men’s bodies to applying to women’s (and children’s) bodies when we now know you can’t do that.
But it is indeed true that the long standing gender bias against women in health care is not so much a thing now. In fact, even when we exclude pregnancy related health care, women receive more health care dollars, more tests, more care than men facing a similar health crisis. Why? Because they seek it out.
We’ve done a great job at raising awareness of “women’s” issues and “women’s health”. We can certainly do the same for men, and should. But it’s not about a lack of research or lack of trying to get men to get healthcare, it’s because we haven’t figured out a way to motivate men themselves to care for themselves, and seek care for themselves. So don’t blame me. Blame men. (And then let’s stop blaming and try to fix it, okay?)
Ah, that old line.
Translation: Men are by preference used as experimental animals because they are more expendable, which is somehow sexist against women. Killing men just shows how privileged they are. :rolleyes:
Garbage. Women have long received much more funding for female-specific research, and men have preferentially been used as experimental subjects because people simply care less if they are hurt or killed. This thread certainly helps demonstrate that disdain for male life.
And do you have a source for this claim?
Most of my texts say that men were preferred as test subjects because the researchers wanted to remove the confounding influence of female hormone cycles from the variables they had to consider when designing and interpreting studies. Some of the very oldest texts say that women are unsuitable as test subjects because they are too frail, or not considered reliable reporters. I’ve never seen a claim that it was because men are more expendable, but I await your source, of course.
“Yeah, men are pigs. Too bad they own everything. Arrrh, arrh arrh…”–Tim Allen
No. It shows a lack of insight by researchers, which have historically been primarily men, that what works to treat men might not work in the same way to treat women. It was just assumed that it wouldn’t matter.
It must be tough for the pro-choice men. They hate women and men!
My understanding is that spending specifically on women’s health issues was historically negligable. Concerted public awareness campaigns since the 1970s have turned that around in recent times, but it isn’t exactly something that happened on its own. The current state of affairs is the end result of hundreds of millions of donated dollars and the efforts of countless lobbyists and volunteers over multiple decades.
In other words, if you actually want to see change, you’re going to have to work for it just like everyone else. And no, your posts on this board do not qualify as activism.
Print this off and put it up on your refrigerator. Years from now, you’ll tear it down in embarrassment at the young fool you used to be. How do you not already realize this?
My guess for that would be that it’s mostly diet. Most Nth-generation Americans, when they think of “cheap food”, think of fast food, while I would expect Hispanics would be more likely to think of something like rice and beans. You’ll live a lot longer on a diet of rice and beans than you will on a diet of Big Macs.
Given how many relatives and other people I’ve known who have lived into their late 90’s still healthy, in some cases still working, still enjoying life I’d have to say that if I were healthy, able-bodied, and mentally alert I’d be happy to live “far past” 75.
Not so much. After the first generation, Latino Americans tend to have adapted the eating habits of their American cohort. I am not sure where this high life expectancy for Latinos comes from; all the data that I have seen indicates that their life expectancies are less than those of white non-Latinos and greater than those of blacks. Perhaps when the effects of poverty are controlled for, they do better than might be expected, but I don’t think the raw stats look too great.
These. I think most men who reach my age–hell, HALF my age–are surprised they’ve lived as long as they have.
No more so than many men do every day.
Don’t eat much genuine Mexican beans and rice, do you? It’s amazing how much manteca/lard you can add to refritos before it starts pooling on top, and the more you add the tastier they are, while Big Macs are made with low-fat meat because it’s cheaper and gunks up the grill less.
ETA: Now that umami has been accepted as the fifth taste I want to nominate lard as the sixth. Lots of things just aren’t as good when made with other fats.
if it means anything a lot of things affect life expectancy like income, race, education, etc.
if female health span longer the way life expectancy is?.. an extra. 3 years if you are disabled is not preferable.
If I recall, a century ago men tended to outlive women. It was certainly true prior to 150 years ago, when so many women died in childbirth. So this phenomena is relatively recent. Given when it occurred, I’d say reducing the number of pregnancies per women seems to have increased their lifespan, as did making childbirth safer. It could be one factor in “women live longer” is a reduction of burden/stress due to having fewer offspring.
As men do not have a comparable physical stressor imposed on them I’m not sure how to get the same “bump” in life expectancy from them.
It is a known fact that castrated men live longer.
It’s a lifestyle choice.