One of the core principles of success is that if you want to know how to be successful, study someone who had attained the success that you desire.
We live in a culture where many people want to live as long as possible.
And, yet, very few people are studying the model of success in this realm.
In virtually all cultures, across all eras, women outlive men.
A landmark study published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal specifically studied the survival of both sexes in seven populations under extreme conditions — including famines, epidemics, and slavery.
It found that women survived better than men. In all populations, they had lower mortality across almost all ages and lived longer on average than men.
Before you start to rationalize that men take more risk than women, or that being out hunting or in the fields makes men more likely to die early, consider that this outcome isn’t a result of behavior differences.
The researchers discovered that gender differences in infant mortality contributed the most to the gender gap in life expectancy. Newborn girls were able to survive extreme mortality hazards better than newborn boys.
The fact that this survival advantage extends to newborns, where there’s little difference in behavioral factors, supports the hypothesis that the female advantage is rooted in biology.
You’d think that if we want to find answers to what conditions and traits would improve longevity, we would study the model of longevity.
Yet women remain under-studied in medicine and longevity research.
From fitness studies to drug trials, women are often underrepresented, if they are included at all.
Something to think about the next time you hear an assertion about some fact that is “proven by science.”
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