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Just for fun: Have you ever wondered why women live longer than men? Is it biological? Or, is it just because men do stupid stuff and get themselves killed a little more often? Presented here for your enjoyment are 9 photos showing how men often shorten their own lifespans. Why Women Live Longer Than Men

Bob and Kay Sarver were married for more than 74 years. Last month, they died within 15 hours of each other. On Friday, they were laid to rest as one.

Taking regular exercise, drinking only in moderation and watching what you eat makes no difference to one's chances of reaching 100, research has found. Those who are lucky enough to qualify for a telegram from the Queen have simply been dealt a good genetic hand at birth, the study indicates. Academics studied almost 500 people between 95 and 109 and compared them with over 3,000 others born during the same period. They found those who lived extremely long lives ate just as badly, drank and smoked just as much, took just as little exercise and were just as likely to...

LONDON (Reuters) - If Aubrey de Grey's predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger. A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging -- banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely. "I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I'd call a decisive...

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 13 (UPI) -- A blood test that measures the length of a person's telomeres -- a predictor of longevity -- may be available soon, U.S. and Spanish researchers say. "Knowing whether our telomeres are a normal length or not for a given chronological age will give us an indication of our health status and of our physiological 'age' even before diseases appear," Maria A. Blasco, who heads the Telomeres and Telomerase Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center and who co-founded the company Life Length, told Scientific American. Telomeres are caps on the ends of...

SAN ANTONIO (April 22, 2011) — Since the 1930s scientists have proposed food restriction as a way to extend life in mice. Though feeding a reduced-calorie diet has indeed lengthened the life spans of mice, rats and many other species, new studies with dozens of different mouse strains indicate that food restriction does not work in all cases. Diet and fat loss Researchers at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio’s Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, with colleagues at the University of Colorado, studied the effect of food restriction on fat and weight loss in 41 genetically different...

Long before the age of gene therapy and miracle medical treatments, the secrets of long life were being gathered and revealed in a unique study of 1,500 children born about 1910. By studying these people throughout their lives, successive generations of researchers collected nearly 10 million pieces of observable data and have been able to produce solid insights into human longevity. "Most people who live to an old age do so not because they have beaten cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or lung disease; rather, the long-lived have mostly avoided serious ailments altogether," according to Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R....

Sudden bursts of moderate to intense physical activity - such as jogging or having sex -- significantly increase the risk of having a heart attack . . .

The idea of using genetic engineering to enhance human beings scares a lot of people. For example, at a 2006 meeting called by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Richard Hayes, the executive director of the left-leaning Center for Bioethics and Society, testified that “enhancement technologies would quickly be adopted by the most privileged, with the clear intent of widening the divisions that separate them and their progeny from the rest of the human species.” Deploying such enhancement technologies would “deepen genetic and biological inequality among individuals,” exacerbating “tendencies towards xenophobia, racism and warfare.” Hayes concluded that allowing...

A regular uptake of the trace element lithium can considerably promote longevity. This is the result of a new study by scientists of Friedrich Schiller University Professor Dr. Michael Ristow's team along with Japanese colleagues from universities in Oita and Hiroshima have demonstrated by two independent approaches that even a ow concentration of lithium leads to low concentration of lithium leads to an increased life expectancy in humans as well as in a mode humans as well as in a mode organism, the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. The research team presents its results in the online edition of the scientific publication...

People living in remote villages in Ecuador have a mutation that some biologists say may throw light on human longevity and ways to increase it. The villagers are very small, generally less than three and a half feet tall, and have a rare condition known as Laron syndrome or Laron-type dwarfism. They are probably the descendants of conversos, Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Christianity in the 1490s but were nonetheless persecuted in the Inquisition. They are also almost completely free of two age-related diseases, cancer and diabetes. A group of 99 villagers with...

Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who inspired television viewers to trim down and pump iron decades before exercise became a national obsession, has died at age 96. His agent Rick Hersh says LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay on California’s central coast.

The first-ever national study of Latino life expectancy reveals that Latinos in the United States live 2.5 years longer than their white counterparts -- a poor-in-wealth, rich-in-health paradox that mystifies doctors. A Latino baby in the U.S. will live to the average age of 80.6 years, compared with 78.1 years for a white baby, according to the new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, released Wednesday. "This is surprising because of low social status," said Elizabeth Arias, of the CDC. Based on rates of poverty, education and access to care -- factors long known to be linked to...

Questions have focused on the analytic platform used to find about 150 genetic variations linked to longevity Just like the fountain of youth, a study that purported to find genetic secrets to longevity may be a myth, critics say. Researchers led by Thomas Perls and Paola Sebastiani from Boston University reported July 1 in an online publication in Science that they had identified 150 genetic markers that distinguish centenarians from people with average life spans with 77 percent accuracy. Almost immediately the study came under fire because of a technical flaw. Most of the controversy stems from the devices used...

Scientists studying aging have long been fascinated by those rare individuals who somehow manage not only to live at least 100 years but also remain relatively healthy and spry even in their final years. What's their secret? Is it clean living? A positive attitude? Or is it something in their genes? A federally funded study released Thursday took an important step toward trying to answer that question by scanning the genes of a large number of centenarians and identifying genetic signatures that appear linked with living a long, healthy life. "This is groundbreaking research," said Winifred K. Rossi, deputy director...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Getting a bit more calcium in your diet could help you live longer, new research suggests. Swedish researchers found that men who consumed the most calcium in food were 25 percent less likely to die over the next decade than their peers who took in the least calcium from food. None of the men took calcium supplements. The findings are in line with previous research linking higher calcium intake with lower mortality in both men and women, the researchers point out in a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology. While many researchers have looked...

WESTMORELAND, N.H. (AP) -- Two of the oldest people in the world have died on the same day, one in New Hampshire and one in Michigan. Mary Josephine Ray was certified as the oldest person living in the United States. Her granddaughter Katherine Ray says she died in a Westmoreland, N.H., nursing home Sunday at 114 years, 294 days. The Gerontology Research Group says Daisey Bailey died in Detroit hours later at 113 years, 342 days. The group tracks and studies old people and certifies those 110 or older, called supercentenarians.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People with fat in their thighs and backsides may live longer because the fat traps harmful fatty particles and actively secretes helpful compounds, according to a report published on Tuesday. Many studies have shown that people who accumulate fat around the abdomen and stomach are more likely to die of heart disease and other causes than bottom-heavy people, but the reasons are not clear. This may be because several different mechanisms are involved, said Konstantinos Manolopoulos of Britain's University of Oxford. "It is the protective role of lower body, that is, gluteofemoral fat, that is striking," Manolopoulos...

Can you really be bored to death? ...experts say there's a possibility that the more bored you are, the more likely you are to die early.

You really can be bored to death, scientists discover Tedium: People with dull jobs must find outside interests, experts warn Boredom could be shaving years off your life, scientists have found. Researchers say that people who complain of boredom are more likely to die young, and that those who experienced 'high levels' of tedium are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than those satisfied with their lot. More than 7,000 civil servants were studied over 25 years - and those who said they were bored were nearly 40 per cent more likely to...

A PILL to help people live to 100 free from debilitating health problems is set to "revolutionise" ageing, experts said yesterday. The breakthrough has come after scientists identified three “super-genes”. People born with the genes are 20 times more likely to reach a century – and 80 per cent less likely to develop the senility disease Alzheimer’s. Even being overweight or a heavy smoker does not stop a third of those with the genes living to 100. Now US researchers are working to produce a drug that can mimic the genetic benefits and hope it will be ready for testing...

People who carry a few extra pounds after age 70 tend to live longer than people who don’t, new research finds. Overweight older adults who took part in the Australian study had a clear survival advantage over those who were normal weight, underweight, or obese. The findings suggest that the widely accepted body mass index (BMI) weight guidelines may not be particularly useful after age 70, lead researcher Leon Flicker, PhD, of the University of Western Australia tells WebMD. Last summer, researchers in Canada reported the same findings after analyzing data from more than 11,000 adults followed for more than...

Lounging in front of the tube not only eats up hours in your day, it may also shorten your life, according to a new study. The study, which looked at the connection between watching TV and death for 8,800 Australian adults, found that each hour of TV-viewing was associated with an 11 percent increased risk of death from any cause, and an 18 percent increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease. These findings held true even after the researchers took into account other factors that could raise the risk of dying, such as age, gender, waist circumference and exercise habits....

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States ranked 29th in the world in 2006 in life expectancy at age 50. That places it more than three years behind the world's leader, Japan, and more than one and a half years behind Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Iceland, Spain, and Switzerland. About 4 million Americans reach the age of 50 each year, so an average loss of one and a half years per person means an aggregate loss of some 6 million years of potential life, valued at anywhere from $600 billion to $1.3 trillion annually. In 2007, the...

Long life may stem from a proper imbalance of dietary nutrients. A new study in fruit flies suggests that the life-extending properties of caloric restriction may be due not only to fewer calories in the diet, but also to just the right mix of protein building blocks, called amino acids. The study, published online December 2 in Nature, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets. Coupled with other data, the new study should prompt researchers to reevaluate whether it is calorie count or the nutrient composition of a diet that is most important for regulating lifespan...

(BRONX, NY) — A team led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has found a clear link between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres — the tip ends of chromosomes. The findings appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Telomeres play crucial roles in aging, cancer and other biological processes. Their importance was recognized last month, when three scientists were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for determining the structure of telomeres and discovering how they protect...

Scientists have shown that feeding a simple polyamine called spermidine to worms, fruit flies and yeast significantly prolongs their lifespan. In addition, adding spermidine to the diet of mice decreased molecular markers of ageing, and when human immune cells were cultured in a medium containing spermidine, they also lived for longer.Spermidine - a simple linear molecule found in large quantities in human sperm and grapefruit - is known to be necessary for cell growth and maturation, and as cells age their level of spermidine is know to fall. Now, Frank Madeo from the University of Graz in Austria and his colleagues have shown...

So what does the world's oldest man eat? The answer is not much, at least not too much. Walter Breuning, who turned 113 on Monday, eats just two meals a day and has done so for the past 35 years. "I think you should push back from the table when you're still hungry," Breuning said. At 5 foot 8, ("I shrunk a little," he admitted) and 125 pounds, Breuning limits himself to a big breakfast and lunch every day and no supper. "I have weighed the same for about 35 years," Breuning said. "Well, that's the way it should be."...

Reliapundit alerts us to breaking news: Gertrude Baines, who lived to be the world's oldest person on a steady diet of crispy bacon, fried chicken and ice cream, died Friday at a nursing home. She was 115. Baines, who remarked last year that she enjoyed life so much she wouldn't mind living another 100 years, died in her sleep, said Emma Camanag, administrator at Western Convalescent Hospital. The centenarian likely suffered a heart attack, said her longtime physician, Dr. Charles Witt. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. ...Staff at Baines' nursing home described her as a...

Is it really possible for anyone to live happily to 100? The good news is that your body was designed to be 100 - you just have to get out of the way. Getting out of the way means taking an honest look at the habits and lifestyle you are living with today. Most of us have developed habits that limit our true health potential. But don't let these bad habits of the past discourage you - it is never too late to make new choices. What you did in the past can be changed, and your body will respond...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, often the harbinger of bad news about e. coli outbreaks and swine flu, recently had some good news: The life expectancy of Americans is higher than ever, at almost 78. Discussions about life expectancy often involve how it has improved over time. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy for men in 1907 was 45.6 years; by 1957 it rose to 66.4; in 2007 it reached 75.5. Unlike the most recent increase in life expectancy (which was attributable largely to a decline in half of the leading causes of death...

U.S. life expectancy has risen to a new high, now standing at nearly 78 years, the government reported Wednesday. The increase is due mainly to falling death rates in almost all the leading causes of death. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006. The new U.S. data is a preliminary report based on about 90 percent of the death certificates collected in 2007. It comes from the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Life expectancy is the period a...

Could a pill one day slow ageing in humans?Punchstock Rapamycin, a drug commonly used in humans to prevent transplanted organs from being rejected, has been found to extend the lives of mice by up to 14% — even when given to the mice late in life. In flies and worms, drug treatments have been shown to prolong lifespan, but until now, the only robust way to extend life in mammals has been to heavily restrict diet. The researchers caution, however, that using this drug to extend the lifespan of humans might be problematic because it suppresses the immune system —...

A study published Wednesday found that rapamycin, a drug used in organ transplants, increased the life span of mice by 9% to 14%, the first definitive case in which a chemical has been shown to extend the life span of normal mammals. Anti-aging researchers also expect a second study, to be released this week, will show that sharply cutting the calorie intake of monkeys extends their lives substantially. The experiment is said to be the first technique shown to retard aging in primates ... The Wisconsin study, which began in 1989 with 30 monkeys and added 46 more in 1994,...

Being overweight won’t kill you — it may even help you live longer. That’s the latest from a study that analyzed data on 11,326 Canadian adults, ages 25 and older, who were followed over a 12-year period. The report, published online last week in the journal Obesity, found that overall, people who were overweight but not obese — defined as a body mass index of 25 to 29.9 — were actually less likely to die than people of normal weight, defined as a B.M.I. of 18.5 to 24.9. By contrast, people who were underweight, with a B.M.I. under 18.5, were...

People die, but one part of them, at least in principle, is immortal. In the germline cells that produce eggs or sperm, biological time stands still. This is why babies are all born with the same age, the clock set to zero, regardless of the age of their parents. A little piece of the germline’s immortality, it now seems, can be acquired by the ordinary cells of the body, and used to give the organism extra longevity. This is the conclusion of a research group at the Massachusetts General Hospital led by Sean P. Curran and Gary Ruvkun. Their studies...

The oldest survivor of the First World War, Henry Allingham, is celebrating his 113th birthday with a party organised by the Royal Navy. The veteran soldier also holds the record as the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland, the last surviving member of the Royal Naval Air Service and the last surviving founding member of the Royal Air Force.

A man's chances of dying early are cut by a fifth if their bride is between 15 and 17 years their junior. The risk of premature death is reduced by 11 per cent if they marry a woman seven to nine years younger. The study at Germany's Max Planck Institute also found that men marrying older women are more likely to die early. The results suggest that women do not experience the same benefits of marrying a toy boy or a sugar daddy. Wives with husbands older or younger by between seven and nine years increase their chances of dying...

Want to live to a ripe old age? By far the most important factor in life expectancy is wealth; richer people tend to eat healthfully and smoke and drink less. They also have access to the best health care. Affluent countries also tend to have low rates of violent crime and civil unrest. The following countries have the highest average life expectancies in the world. In case you're wondering, the United States, with an average life expectancy of 77.85, ranks 48th. Get started now and see the list of countries with the highest life expectancy. 1. Andorra: 83.51 Years Located...

Watch Video Poem. (Short parody about atheists' "transhumanism" movement.) Doctor came in sad faced Said he had bad news for me "Cancer's spread throughout you It's metastasized, you see?" "Doc, I got it covered I don't need this old body. Know a friend on Venus Who can make a trade with me. I'll have a new body And outlive my grand baby. Don't you call it crazy. Call it transhumanity." Tell me would you want to Live beyond two hundred years? Still feel like you're twenty And escape an old man's fears? You'll stay young and happy And forget all...

A woman in Kazakhstan who officials said was the oldest in the world at 130 has died after slipping on the bathroom floor of a new flat she was awarded by the state because of her great age. Sakhan Dosova - a mother of ten - said she never visited a doctor nor ate sweets. She was addicted to cottage cheese and put her longevity down to her sense of humour. She received worldwide publicity in March after her alleged age came to light in a census in the former Soviet republic. Demographers were astonished to find that she was...

Too bad Ponce de Leon didn't live in 21st century New York City. He may not have found the Fountain of Youth, but he would have at least gotten a book deal. It seems that every time a Baby Boomer finds a gray hair, another tome is written promising to teach people how to stave off the effects of aging. This year, dozens of self-help titles are set to hit the shelves, all offering tips to extending youth.

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. (Nov. 27) — Edna Parker, who became the world’s oldest person more than a year ago, has died at age 115. UCLA gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles said Parker’s great-nephew notified him that Parker died Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville. She was 115 years, 220 days old, said Robert Young, a senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records. Parker was born April 20, 1893, in central Indiana’s Morgan County and had been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest person since the 2007 death in Japan of Yone Minagawa, who was four months her...

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. - Edna Parker, who once taught in a two-room schoolhouse and became the world's oldest person more than a year ago, has died at age 115. UCLA gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles said Parker's great nephew notified him that Parker passed away Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville. She was 115 years, 220 days old, said Robert Young, a senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records. Parker was born April 20, 1893 in central Indiana's Morgan County and had been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest person since the Aug. 14, 2007, death in...

A woman celebrating her 105th birthday says that celibacy and staying single has been the key to her long life. Clara Meadmore, a retired secretary, who still has her own hair, teeth, and sharp wit, never had time for a family and lived alone until going into care. She said: "I've always had lots of platonic friendships with men but never felt the need to go further than that or marry." "When I was a girl you only had sex with your husband and I never married. I grew up in an era where little girls were to be seen...

ARLINGTON — He opened the jacket of his suit and braced himself."Hit me," he said.What?"Go on, hit me!" he insisted, his voice a mock growl.It’s not every day one is invited — instructed — to slug a man in the stomach on his 94th birthday, but then there is only one Jack LaLanne, the godfather of American fitness.Still remarkably fit, the tireless evangelist for preventive health celebrated his birthday Friday at the Arlington Convention Center, where he spoke at a wellness conference presented by the Parker College of Chiropractic.Practicing what he preaches, LaLanne declined a slice of the cake.His wife,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who want to live a long and healthy life might want to take up running. A study published on Monday shows middle-aged members of a runner's club were half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run. Running reduced the risk not only of heart disease, but of cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, researchers at Stanford University in California found. "At 19 years, 15 percent of runners had died compared with 34 percent of controls," Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Any...

Plan for long life, without pandemic NANCY STANCILL Should doctors let people older than 85 die in a flu pandemic? A Monday news story saying a U.S. task force recommends denying lifesaving care in a pandemic or other disaster to some folks -- including healthy people above 85 -- was unsettling. They're talking about my mother, soon to be 86. My friend Karen's father, who is 92. Another friend's grandmother, 102. These people live life joyfully, with their minds and hearts intact. My mother relishes foreign travel. Karen's father loves bird watching. The 102-year-old grandmother plays a mean hand of...

Scientists: 115-year-old's brain worked perfectly By ANRICA DEB , Associated Press WriterJune 13, 2008 Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who died at age 115 in 2005, is seen in this May 26, 2004 photo at de Westerkim, home for the elderly, in Hoogeveen, Netherlands. Scientists say that Henrikje van Andel-Schipper's mind was probably as good as it seemed: a post-mortem analysis of her brain revealed few signs of Alzheimer's or other diseases commonly associated with a decline in mental ability in old age. "This is the first (extremely old) brain that did not have these problems," Professor Gert Holstege of Groningen University...

Henry Allingham, who was born in London on 6 June 1896, is also the last surviving original member of the Royal Air Force - formed 90 years ago... Now partially deaf and almost blind, Mr Allingham, who was born in Clapham, London, now lives at St Dunstan's home for blind ex-servicemen, in Ovingdean. His life has spanned six monarchs and has taken in 21 prime ministers. Mr Allingham is the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and also fought at the Somme and Ypres where he was bombed and shelled. He joined the Royal Air Force when...