Is There Any Medical Explanation Why Women Outlive Their Husbands?

Is There Any Medical Explanation Why Women Outlive Their Husbands?

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QUESTION: When we look around our retirement community, it is apparent that
women must be stronger in some ways, for there are many more women here than
men. Yet all our men were hard workers, and most of them were big strong men.
Is there any medical explanation for the reason women outlive their husbands
so much of the time?
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ANSWER: Your observations that more women survive their husbands is correct,
and your community is not the only one in which that is true. Over the age of
65, the ratio of widows to widowers is about 4 to 1. Despite the fact that
more boy babies are born, about 106 to 100 girls, by the age of 75 there three
women to every two men left living. To try and find the reasons for this we
must look at three factors. Are there any differences in the makeup of the
genes carried by men and women, the influence of hormones during life, and the
types of life styles and environments that men and women live in. To date,
studies of the molecular make up of genes have failed to reveal any
differences to account for the advantage in life span that women seem to
possess. Research is ongoing in this area, for it still seems likely that
part of the answer may lie here. Since male and female hormones differ, the
effect they play in the metabolism of cholesterol and resulting development of
atherosclerosis and heart disease is more rewarding, and the reduced
probability of developing coronary artery disease in women is certainly part
of the answer. Smoking was once a factor, and lung cancer was thought to be a
man's disease, until women in large numbers took up this habit. As many as 7
years of the difference in life expectancy may have been lost by men due to
the effects of tobacco. Work related accidents, deaths due to car accidents,
suicide and homicide all take a greater toll of males as compared to females,
so that more women survive the years prior to retirement. However as age
progresses the gap diminishes, and by age 85, the life expectancy of women is
but 1 year longer than men. Hopefully, new knowledge of heart disease
prevention and smoking cessation will continue to narrow the differences in
life expectancy between men and women.