To be interested in why women generally live longer than men?

I think it’s more complex. My gran died and my grandfather was very practical. He could cook, sew, make things, clean.

But he was horribly lonely. Because women tend to have friends, keep family connections, be active more in their communities. Men, without women, get very lonely very quickly. And loneliness is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day for your health.

How does that correlate with smaller animals tending to live shorter lives than much larger animals?

It’s so they quite literally never have to look after themselves.

That's not true though...married women also live longer than single women, the effect is just less pronounced than for men.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32875051/%23:~:text%3DMulti%252Dstate%2520models%2520estimated%2520TLE,life%2520expectancy%2520among%2520married%2520persons.&ved=2ahUKEwjko7fAxYuQAxW1YEEAHfJaDOwQzsoNegQIHRAi&usg=AOvVaw053VmvvQvHNkyt00I3Czif

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827320302792#:~:text=Although%20marriage%20was%20protective%20for%20both%20men,absolute%20values%20as%20well%20as%20relative%20percentages.

This is true of whales too, saw that on a Attenborough documentary, so it must be true!

I wonder if this is also linked to the science that older men pass on DNA faults to offspring, so really although they CAN have kids later, they really shouldn't, so to protect against these "dud" genes women stop being fertile. The trouble is now men just chuck the older woman and get a younger one pregnant. Which actually is a benefit to the older woman and younger generation as they have one less adult person to look after, so they can help look after the next generation.

Personally I think a contributing factor is that women move their backsides from the sofa more often.

It was approximately 80/20 and audits were done on successful not unsuccessful

yes to woman taking less violent route to death, also taking themselves to places away from the family home, whereas men would take themselves to the garage at home

As my professor used to say, “eggs are expensive, sperm is cheap”.

But breeding populations need variation so almost all animals default over time to around 50:50.

From an evolutionary POV though. If we ‘needed’ men for the species, the older men whose testosterone didn’t hurt them would pass their genes on and confer advantage to that trait. And the ones whose testosterone did hurt them, wouldn’t. So over time we’d have older men. In the same way that we have older women.

If you pretend genes ‘care’ (a la Selfish Gene) you can say that the species ‘cares’ if women live longer but doesn’t ‘care’ about men. Because older women are valuable and older men aren’t. Older women must be useful to the continence of the species and confer advantage.

Every other health issue stems from that.

I think it might be biological. Nature has evolved so every species tried to survive.

In humans, humans would survive (but not for centuries) with one man and 50 women. That could result in 40 or so babies a year.

One woman and 50 men? Only one baby a year possible.

I thought it was all to do with the continuation of the human race. Men can have hundreds of children, but women can only carry a few over their life time. So women are therefore more important and nature has made them stronger.

The old thinking I was taught us that females if all species live longer because essentially having young is hard. Women survive that and you pass on your tough DNA.

I remember hearing that testosterone weakens the heart over time which is why men will eventually die of heart trouble if something else doesn’t get them first.

Smoking rates were always higher in men than women

'Tis because men waste a lot of their lives waiting outside of t'oilets. If we wus to get that back and add it t'end we wud live longer.

I knew more boys were born, and I knew it evened out but I didn't realise it evened out quite so quickly.

How??
How can that happen by pure chance of nature??

Aren't younger parents more likely to have boys because they need more "investment".

I thought men tended to be more stressed

Is it true that smaller people live longer, on average?

I believe studies are on men who were like 5ft 2 & basketball players over 6ft 5.

Anecdotally, a lot of the women I know tend to abstain from unhealthy food, including my mum. When she find out she was pre-diabetic she changed her way of eating, whereas her brother didn’t. Many men seem to have a more devil may care attitude.

They have linked menopause to dementia - the lack of estrogen. HRT seems to be protective in helping with the amyloid plaques and tau tangles.

I'd suggest the main underlying factor is that men think they will live forever (testosterone eggs this idea of being "strong" on) and engage in behaviours to excess that women wouldn't, on the whole, because we think our time is finite and we want to look after offspring and pass on survival instincts. That is why we are all on this site, for example.

Men are hugely more vulnerable to respiratory ailments, at all ages and especially > age 60. That is biological, nothing to do with risk or occupation. Males have a much larger lung capacity ( which allowed them to chase down the mammoth which kept everyone in the group eating enough protein and iron so thank goodness for the risk takers...) and maybe trade off of the larger lung-cardio capacity is more lung vulnerability in old age.

It's not just lungs, though. afaik, male body Organs don't age as well as women's except maybe brains... I've read that adjusting for age, women are more vulnerable to dementia. Could that be lifestyle-linked, women are much more likely to have sedentary lifestyles? Or something biological to do with less vigorous cardio system. Heck If I know.