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| Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan | Buy a book...
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| Author(s): | M. J. Legato |
| Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan |
| ISBN: | 9780230605176 |
| Format: | hardback |
| 254pp | |
| Price: | £14.99, $27.95 |
| Review Date: | 04 September 2008 |
| Review: | A fascinating book which looks at the social and biological reasons why men at all ages, die in greater numbers than women in virtually every society. Typically women live a decade longer. The reason appears to be partly social – they are trained never to refuse to do the most dangerous tasks needed by our society, not to complain and shrug off pain and injury. The young male adult has in any case a combination of recklessness, conviction of invulnerability and willingness to bear pain and deprivation. All these contribute to earlier mortality. However despite the male's greater strength his biology is critically more vulnerable than a women. This starts right in the womb where even the Y bearing sperm which produces a male is more likely to fertilize a flawed egg than an X bearing female producing sperm. The male is also 6 weeks behind in maturity at birth than a female and suffer more from most common infections than females. Also coronary heart disease will start affecting males in their mid-thirties, over 15 years before females. The book looks at all these matters in a very readable style and looks at how to diminish these effects and prolong the male lifespan. |