Life Expectancy Part 2

About my last column, financial planner Josh writes, “I want to shed more ‘color’ on life expectancy.”

Averages are just that; 50 percent above and 50 percent below. Which side of the sample population are you going to be in? Only 1 percent achieve the “average”; everyone else is either above or below.

The example I use all the time about averages involves golf: If you and I both tee off on a Par 3 and both hit our balls pin high; yours 45 feet to the left and mine 45 feet to the right, the “average” between us says we made a hole in one when in fact neither of us came close to a hole in one and will probably three putt for a bogey. But the average from the statistician says we made a hole in one!

According to a 2014 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a girl born in 2012 can expect to live to 81.2 years - almost five years longer than a boy baby born the same year, who’s likely to live to age 76.4. You can read a thousand articles on this topic and hear a myriad of explanations.

“Men are biologically and sociologically at a disadvantage from the time they’re conceived to the time they die,” says Marianne Legato, MD, professor emerita of clinical medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She cites five reasons.

Females are tougher in utero. Two and a half times as many boys are conceived as are girls, Legato says, but they’re so much more likely to succumb to prenatal infection or other issues in the womb that by the time they’re born, the ratio is close to one to one.

Women are less likely to be daredevils. Unintentional injuries are the third leading cause of death in men, according to the CDC; for women it’s only the sixth. The frontal lobes of the brain which deal with responsibility and risk calculation develop much more slowly in males than females, Legato says.

Women succumb to heart disease later than men. Heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women, but men are more likely to develop it - and die from it - as early as their 30s and 40s.

Women have stronger social networks. People with strong social connections have a 50 percent lower chance of dying than those with few social ties, according to a 2010 study at Brigham Young University. “Most men tend to hold their stress and worries close to their chest, while women tend to reach out and talk to others,” Legato explains.

Finally, women take better care of their health. Men are 24 percent less likely than women to have visited a doctor within the past year and are 22 percent more likely to skip out on cholesterol testing, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Several married men explained it this way: “Men die first because our wives wear us down. They always need something done.” I can’t print my comment here.

However, research shows that married men live longer than single men. Hmmm. Maybe married women are using our strong social networks to locate doctors for our husbands. We probably drive them there. Slowly and responsibly.

I am thinking gay married female couples will live longer than any of us! Hear, hear! How about that for equal rights, Cathy and Margie?

Anyone who has a topic idea can reach Lisa at lgraff1979@gmail.com.