12 January 2005

WOMEN WITH STRONG HEARTS LIVE LONGER THAN MEN

In our family, except for my mom, the trend has always been that the women outlive most of the men. My grandmother on both sides outlived my grandfathers, and my cousins' grandmothers and mothers outlived their respective husbands. Have you been observing this same trend in your family, too?

It seems women's secret to long life lies on their hearts --- their strong hearts.

Why Hearty Women Outlive Men
By David Rose

The female heart pumps just as well at 70 as it does at 17 young – and this may explain their longevity.

The age-old riddle of why many women live longer than men has been solved. It’s their pumping power, British researchers have found.

On average, women live five years longer than men and women over the age of 60 are now the fastest-growing section of the British population.

The average male heart becomes weaker with age, and by the age of 70 its power to pump blood around the body could have decreased by up to a quarter of its youthful strength.

David Goldspink, Professor of Cell and Molecular Sports Science at Liverpool John Moores University, said yesterday that women's longevity is linked to the strength of their hearts. Unlike men, they pump just as strongly at 70 as they do at 20.

[TIMES Online ]

Good news for all the lovely women in our lives, and bad news for us males.

What's the use of true love and romance if we are going to meet our Creator sooner than our wives will? Life not being fair makes a mockery of us by rubbing it in our faces. But wait. All is not lost. There's good news yet....

Because we were not created equal, we have to compensate for our seeming "deficiencies" and try to match the innate gift of longevity in women. Professor Goldspink, the lead researcher of the study, said that between the ages of 20 and 70, men lose around ONE THIRD of these contractile cells as a consequence of ageing, but the amount lost is a lot less in the female heart.

Similarly, in a related study, he found that the hearts of veteran male athletes between the ages of 50 and 70 were as powerful as those of 20-year-old male undergraduates who did not exercise.

So, being males, our only hope to match women's innate strong hearts is to make our hearts strong by REGULAR EXERCISE. Culture always finds husbands working hard most of the day, eating fat- and sugar-laden foods, and with no regular exercise programs to strengthen their hearts which degenerate with age.

What do you say, men? We may never outlive our wives, but hey, at least, we can do something to be with them as we both enjoy the passing of the years.

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