Evening Herald
Wednesday 21 March 2012
By Jane Kirby
Women may live longer but men enjoy more years of health – possibly because women are drinking more.
An EU analysis showed that, on average, women outlive men by six years, although there were wide variations between countries.
In terms of quality of life, men have 5pc more healthy years than women.
In 2008, a woman born in Lithuania was expected to live to be 77.6, 11.3 years longer than men.
Even in more prosperous Iceland, a woman can expect to live to 83.3 while a man should only get to 80.
Throughout Europe, men are likely to spend 85pc of their life in good health, compared with 80pc for women.
TOBACCO
The results come from an analysis of studies by the European Society of Cardiology.
They suggest the main reasons behind the gender gap were tobacco and alcohol, so with more women smoking and drinking, scientists expect the difference in life expectancy to narrow.
Dr Simona Giampaoli, who contributed to the analysis, said: “In 2008 the EU life expectancy at birth was 82.4 years in women an d76.4 years in men.
“European women live longer than men because of both biological and behavioural advantages, but women’s longer lives are not necessarily healthy lives.”
STROKE
An international study of more than 34,000 women has revealed that those who consume two more alcoholic drinks a day are at what the researchers described as a “small but statistically significant increased risk” for developing a heart rhythm impairment that can lead to a stroke.
The study, which was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, involved 12 years of research on 34,715 women in Switzerland and the US.
None of the women in the study had the rhythm impairment in question – atrial fibrillation – at the outset of the study, but the researchers concluded that the subjects who alcohol intake exceeded two drinks a day were 60pc more likely to contract the problem than were those who drank less.