The loudest voices in the longevity movement tend to be male. But a new subset of expert-influencers — the “menoposse”— has cropped up, with hyper-specific recommendations for what women should do to stay healthy longer. Are male and female bodies really so different that we need tailored guidelines around exercise, nutrition and sleep?
It’s true that hormones play an important role in health. And certain diseases, including osteoporosis and dementia, affect women more than men — a disparity thought to be caused (at least in part) by menopause.
But when it comes to the basic behaviors that keep us healthy, experts say there are more similarities between men and women than there are differences.
“We have learned a lot about longevity in women, I think,” said Andrea LaCroix, a professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at the University of California, San Diego. “What we haven’t ascertained is that we’re fundamentally different than men in the health behaviors that predict longevity.”
We asked experts in gynecology, epidemiology, exercise, nutrition and sleep about how to optimize women’s aging, and where the conventional recommendations may need a tweak.
Exercise
The issue isn’t that men and women should be working out differently, the experts say. Rather, they should be exercising in the same way but traditionally haven’t — specifically when it comes to strength training.
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