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Women Outlive Men By Five Years 'Because Their Hearts Are Stronger'

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 January 2005, 06:00 CST

WOMEN live longer than men because their hearts remain strong as they grow old, new research has suggested.

Scientists discovered that a healthy man's heart will lose 20 to 25 per cent of its pumping power between the ages of 20 and 70. But while a healthy 70-year-old woman is not as strong as she was 50 years previously, her heart is likely to have the same level of power.

Professor David Goldspink, who led the research, said the findings emphasised the need for men to take regular exercise throughout their lives as it can help compensate for the natural loss of cells from the heart.

He also pointed out that the hearts of veteran athletes aged 50 to 70 could be stronger than those of an inactive 20-year-old.

On average, the lifespan of British women is about five years longer than men's; women over 60 are now the fastest-growing group in contemporary society.

Prof Goldspink, of Liverpool John Moores University, said: "By simultaneously studying both men and women, we have been able to look for either similarities or differences between the two sexes as they get older.

"We're not talking about the disease process, but normal healthy ageing. Between the ages of 20 and 70, men lose 20 per cent of the power of their heart, while women do not lose any power at all.

"This dramatic gender difference might just explain why women live longer than men."

Prof Goldspink's team spent two years studying ageing in more than 250 healthy men and women between 18 and 80.

He said there was currently only a "partial explanation" for the difference between men and women. "The heart is a muscular pump with lots of contractile cells," he said. "Between 20 and 70, men lose about a third of those cells and they are lost forever - you don't get them back. The fall-off in power is probably linked to this loss of cells."

It is thought that women are better able to replace the lost heart cells than men. "There may well be some protective measure through female hormones," Prof Goldspink said.

However, he said this was simply a theory and he would not advocate giving female hormones to men. And he stressed that any woman who thought she did not have to exercise would be "foolish".

"Women have to be careful because they tend to be smaller than guys, on average. The heart is smaller and the limb muscles are smaller and less powerful," he said.

"As time goes on, the female is going to have problems with quality of life, climbing the stairs, etc. They are living longer but they need to exercise to keep their limb muscles, as well as the heart, in good shape."

In a related study, Prof Goldspink said the heart of a veteran athlete, such as someone of 60 running 30 miles a week, "does a lot better than an inactive 60-year-old and, in fact, better than an inactive 20-year-old".

So, if they suffered a heart attack or other heart problems they would be in a better position to recover. Prof Goldspink is calling for a public campaign to inform people about how much and what kind of exercise they should undertake to stay healthy as they get older.

"We've been told to look after our retirement with a pension, but people need to look at physical activity as an investment in their retirement as well," he said.

His team's study also found large arteries became stiffer and less elastic with age, causing blood pressure to increase both at rest and during exercise.

Blood flow to the muscles and skin of limbs also progressively decreased, the researchers found. This occurred earlier in men, but women soon caught up after the menopause.

Professor Stewart Hillis, a Glasgow University cardiologist and expert in sports medicine, said the research was "very interesting" but there was a need for a wider study to prove the findings. "Female hormones have a protective element - women will develop coronary heart disease about a decade later than men - while male hormones, we think, may cause more problems," he said.

"You need to be aggressive to be the wage-earner, but that's at a cost. But if you give males female hormones, you don't get the benefits."

Graham Duffy, 62, a keen rower from Edinburgh, knows the benefits of regular exercise. He had a quintuple heart bypass in 1998 after several arteries became clogged, but was able to walk the day after the operation. He said his high level of fitness had undoubtedly helped his recovery. "The doctors said I was doing everything at twice the speed of everyone else in terms of making a recovery," he said.

Within a month he was back at work and three months later he was rowing again. He has since won silver and bronze medals at the World Masters Rowing Regatta.

Source: Scotsman, The

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