Ladies’ secret to long life, marry a younger man!

New discoveries that stand acceptable norms on their heads are being made every day. In a marriage a woman is expected to be years younger than her husband. Over the years, the age difference has shortened considerably.

Bolder women even venture into marrying younger men, thus the term cougar is coined for such women. They are middle-aged women who ‘prey’ on younger men. It is a kind of relationship frowned upon in many societies, no matter how modern or sophisticated.

Now, researchers have provided reprieve for women who are into such marriage or planning to. They say that a woman marrying a man seven to nine years younger has 20 per cent higher mortality rate than if she and her husband were of the same age or if he was older.

A study found that marrying a man older than her shortens a woman’s lifespan. Findings drawn from the medical records of two million couples submit that the best a woman can do is marry a man of about the same age.

Now we know why it is a current rave in Hollywood.

But then a study by Sven Drefahl at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rosktock, Germany, shows that the greater the age gap between a woman and her husband, the shorter her life expectancy, regardless of whether he is older or younger.

“These theories now have to be reconsidered,” said Drefahl. “The reasons for mortality differences due to the age gap of the spouses remain unclear.”

And another wonder presented by these researches goes that married men and women both tend to live longer than unmarried individuals.

-Ify Chiemeziem

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