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Aging and Longevity: How men and women are different

July 17, 2020

When it comes to longevity, women tend to outlive men, say researchers
Gender-based differences in the immune system and cell structure are believed to be responsible for why men and women age differently
At a molecular level, women have more stable biology with fewer changes in protein levels compared to men
There are also sex differences in how education counters memory decline in old age, with women benefitting more as they grow older
Women also tend to develop different types of heart disease with different symptoms and are more health-conscious than men

When Dr. Milt Michaels, a 93-year-old retired physician in Pittsburgh hosted a dinner party for more than a dozen friends with his 88-year-old wife, Lois, last year, women outnumbered men on the guest list. Two friends from the group, all of whom are between 84 and 99 years old, have since died. “Women live longer than men,” says Dr. Michaels. Scientists have known for a long time that women outlive men. And the longevity streak that women currently enjoy will likely continue into the future. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2060, the life expectancy for women is projected to be 87.3 years and for men 83.9 years. Geroscience researchers, who study age-related diseases and aging, are trying to figure out exactly why. “A lot of people say men smoke and work harder jobs. That’s why they don’t live as long. There are genetic and biological differences,” says David Sinclair. Dr. Sinclair is the co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. Scientists are examining cell structure, the immune system, the brain and other organ systems in men and women and finding that these systems age differently in men and women. It could explain why older men have been impacted to a greater degree by COVID-19 than older women. One study found that after the age of 65, men lose antibody-producing B cells, while women retain them. The findings are surprising to scientists like Dr. Duygu Ucar, associate professor at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut. His team found that men experience more inflammation, a complication associated with severe COVID-19. There are other gender divides as well. Women have better short-term memory (they’re more likely to find missing car keys). They also develop fewer laugh lines and frown lines than men. Women sleep 20 minutes less every day compared to men. Last but not least, women are more likely to seek medical attention when they feel unwell. “We’re trying to guess how men and women age differently,” says Marcia Stefanick, professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Previous research studies on aging have often excluded women and we need to put that right. “Men and women are separated by many cultural, social, and economic differences that affect aging,” she adds. At the Institute of Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, director Nir Barzilai says new patterns are becoming apparent. At this institute, researchers examined the blood of men and women in the 65-95 age group and found that the rate at which proteins change is different between the genders, with women demonstrating only 277 changes compared to 600 significant changes in men. In other words, women have more stable biology. Dr. Barzilai is the author of a book called “Age Later” and specializes in geroscience. Memory and aging are undeniably linked. Neuroscience professor Michael Ullman at Georgetown University is interested in discerning the role of age, gender, and education on declarative memory. Declarative memory helps people remember specific things like where they put their keys or their new neighbor’s name. Dr. Ullman’s team enrolled more than 700 adults in the 58-98 age group in a study. The participants were shown pictures of real and fictitious objects, then shown twice as many objects and asked to remember the ones they had seen earlier. Until the age of 70, men and women did equally well at recalling previously viewed items. But after the age of 70, women performed considerably better than men. The results of the study were published in Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition. Interestingly, education benefited women more than men in terms of memory gains in old age. An 80-year-old woman with a college degree had a declarative memory as strong as that of a 60-year-old woman with who didn’t go to college. The same gains were not as evident in men. The findings highlight that early life access to education can help counteract memory decline in old age, particularly in women. Diseases like Alzheimer’s tend to affect women more than men for reasons that are not completely understood. Susan Cheng, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, has been studying gender differences in heart disease. It is well known that older men are affected more by heart disease than older women. However, blood pressure starts increasing in women as early as their 30s and rises faster than it does in men. Dr. Cheng’s study showed that blood vessels age faster in women than men, which could at least partly explain the differences in aging-related heart problems. “The assumption was that women simply caught up with men in terms of cardiovascular risk, not that they have different biology and physiology,” she says. The new findings suggest women develop different kinds of heart diseases and have different symptoms. Seventy-four-year-old Audrey Hyman has first-hand experience of this in her family. Like her, her mother had high blood pressure. Moreover, Audrey says has found it more difficult to control her blood as she has gotten older. In contrast, her husband Alexander, who is a decade older than her doesn’t have chronic illness or heart disease. Instead, he has trouble with mobility and back and leg pain, which forces him to stay mostly at home. “She gets around better than I do,” he says. After retiring from the Washington D.C. public school system, the couple started a travel agency. While Ms. Hyman takes care of networking and marketing, her husband handles billing and management. “He notices where I put things,” she says. “So, he can help me if I need to find something. We help each other like that,” she says. Another difference between the Hymans is their attitude to keeping fit. Ms. Hyman is active in walking groups. She meditates. She reads stories to children on Facebook. She is also authoring two books. “I am more health-conscious,” she says. “I want to keep my mind going.” According to psychologist Katharine Esty, author of the book Eightysomethings, women make more efforts to stay healthy, both physically and mentally. Dr. Esty, who is 85, interviewed more than 125 octogenarians for her book. “Men will eat steak and order French fries,” she says. Women tend to be sharp and outspoken as they age. Men become gentler, taking to hobbies like cooking and bird watching. “Women have a harder time accepting age,” says Jacqueline Olds, a psychiatrist in her early 70s. Looks are more important to women and they panic when they lose their looks with age. Men don’t place as much importance on looks. They don’t get their sense of power from how they look. Dr. Olds’s husband, Richard, is a practicing psychiatrist and is roughly the same age as his wife. “The big issue for men is the fear that they will become meaningless with retirement,” he says. He has accepted growing old better than his wife. But when he started losing hair as a high schooler, he went through a great deal of shock and trauma that settled down later in life. The Michaels in Pittsburgh have a routine. Ms. Michaels, who is legally blind, spends her time outdoors, tending to her garden. Her husband, who uses a cane and walker to get around, reads newspapers indoors. He has had both hips replaced at 78, takes a few pills, and has overall decent health. “I wouldn’t drop dead if I didn’t get a refill,” he says, talking about his medicines. Humor keeps things fresh in the Michaels home, the latest joke being the number of defective hearing aids at their last dinner party. “Out of seven people with hearing aids, five were out of order,” laughs Ms. Michaels. She thinks she is more accepting of her limitations, perhaps because she has been experiencing vision loss for two decades. She’s had some broken bones from falls as well. Women are more resilient than men, she says. Older men of our generation didn’t do much as partners and husbands, while women were multitaskers. Her husband, Dr. Michaels, is also more accepting of his frailty with age. “I might end up on the ground if I try to run,” he says. There are other changes, such as difficulty recalling specific words. But some changes are for the better. “I’ve gotten nicer,” he says. Now when she asks what I want to eat, I say I’ll eat whatever you make.

References: https://www.wsj.com/articles/women-and-men-age-differentlyin-more-ways-than-just-longevity-11594774800?mod=flipboard

Aging and Longevity: How men and women are different

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