Why Men Die Earlier Than Women

An insight has been given as to why men die earlier than women. In their efforts to boost the life expectancy of men, scientists have found that working long hours and reducing hours of sleep in midlife may lead to poorer physical health in old age. This is the findings of a new study published in the journal ‘Age and Ageing’.
The quarter-century study of Finnish businessmen found those who worked more than 50 hours a week and slept less than 47 hours weekly when they were middle aged were in worse physical health as old men than peers who had healthier work and sleep habits when they were in their prime.
Reacting to the study, Lead Author, Mikaela Birgitta von Bonsdorff of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, said: “The results are in line with what we hypothesised but we were not sure if we would be able to detect these longterm associations."
The ‘NewsmaxHealth’ reported that the researchers used data from the Helsinki Businessmen Study to follow the health outcomes for more than 3,000 white men born between 1919 and 1934.
About 1,500 of the men had provided clinical characteristics of health, self-rated health, working hours and sleep duration in 1974 when they were in their mid to late 40s, on average, and completed health related quality of life surveys in the year 2000, when most were in their 60s and 70s.
During their working years, nearly half of the original group of men had what researchers considered normal working hours of less than 50 hours per week and 352 men worked more than 50 hours a week.
Similar proportions of men had normal sleep of at least 47 hours per week, versus shorter sleep totals. Researchers found that men with long work and short sleep or long work and normal sleep in midlife had poorer scores for physical functioning, vitality and general health than those with normal work and normal sleep.
Midlife smoking and self-rated poor health at that time explained some of the association with the results at older age, but not all.