Take a leisurely walk around any retirement community and you’re bound to see some real gender imbalance, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. New research out of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and UC San Francisco found that the gap between how long men live and how long women live has been widening for more than a decade.
As of 2021 (the latest year there’s data for), women live an average of 5.8 years longer than men. That’s up a year from 2010 and making the gender longevity gap the largest it’s been since 1996.
The researchers were able to pinpoint the reasons why. The biggies: cardiovascular disease, cancer, opioid use, and suicide. COVID didn’t help matters either. At least 65,000 more men have died from the virus than women. This is primarily due to the fact that men are more likely to be homeless, locked up, and work in occupations putting them at higher risk for contracting the virus.
Geller explains that a big reason for this is that more men use tobacco than women—including vaping, which is still bad news for your heart. Vaping nicotine causes blood vessels to narrow, which increases blood pressure and heart rate. This puts stress on the heart and can eventually lead to a heart attack or stroke. Vaping weed increases blood pressure too, which means it also ups the risk for heart disease.