A Nigerian man has stated that he is scared of getting married because ”men always die first in marriage”.
Okwudiri wrote this on Facebook after a report by AFP on Monday, about a new study by the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal, stated that women tend to outlive men and stay mentally sharp longer, because female brains appear on average about three years younger.
The study enrolled 121 women and 84 men, who underwent PET scans to measure brain metabolism, or the flow of oxygen and glucose in their brains.
Like other organs in the body, the brain uses sugar as fuel. But just how it metabolizes glucose can reveal a lot about the brainâs metabolic age.
Subjects ranged from their 20s to 80s, and across those age spans, womenâs brains appeared metabolically younger than menâs, said the findings.
A machine-learned algorithm showed that womenâs brains were on average about 3.8 years younger than their chronological ages.
And when compared to men, male brains were 2.4 years older than their true ages.
âItâs not that menâs brains age faster,â said senior author Manu Goyal, assistant professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.
âThey start adulthood about three years older than women, and that persists throughout life,â he added.
One theory is that hormones might begin shaping brain metabolism at a young age, setting females on a pattern that is more youthful throughout their lives, compared to men.
Scientists hope to find out if metabolic differences in the brain may play a protective role for women, who tend to score better than men on cognitive tests of reason, memory and problem solving in old age.
It âcould mean that the reason women donât experience as much cognitive decline in later years is because their brains are effectively younger,â said Goyal.
More work is underway to confirm and better understand the implications of the research.

