Men, please note — women seem to be emerging as the stronger sex, say experts, who claim to have found evidence that females live longer than men as their bodies are better at repairing themselves.
In an article in an upcoming edition of Scientific American journal, a team led by Tom Kirkwood of Newcastle University argues that women have to be better at fixing wear and tear on their cells in order to have healthy offspring.
Kirkwood has said that it made biological sense for men to be more disposable and therefore die younger. The body is disposable, argues Kirkwood, because the genes are passed to the next generation.
“This theory is widely accepted now. Ageing is not driven by a clock,” Prof. Kirkwood was quoted by The Observer as saying.
Ageing is regulated by genes that specify the levels of maintenance that repair the damage to cells. Much of this damage is inevitable and caused by free radicals, a byproduct of the chemical reactions in cells that produce energy.
This damage may injure the cells’ DNA or their membrane, which need to be repaired. But in Kirkwood’s theory, ageing is not pre-programmed because the genes that repair cells can be modified.
The gap between men’s and women’s life expectancy hasactually been closing in this country and is now 4.2 years (a narrowing from six years over the past 27 years).