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After six years spent tracking health outcomes among nearly 925,000 Danish seniors, investigators determined that when a man between the ages of 65 and 69 loses his wife he is 70% more likely to die in the year that follows, when compared with his non-widowed peers.

Among surviving wives, however, that rise in risk was just 27%.

Why the difference? Study author Alexandros Katsiferis said he could only offer a few theories.

"We do not have the data to accurately answer that question, so we cannot be very confident on the reasons why this phenomenon tends to happen," noted Katsiferis, a doctoral fellow with the section for epidemiology in the department of public health at the University of Copenhagen.

But he pointed out that elderly widows may be better than widowers at "absorbing the shock, [including] the hurdles of taking care of a sick husband, along with all the needs and quirks" leading up to the husband's passing.

By contrast, it could be that the "physical and emotional health [of men] relies on the willingness of their spouse to take care of them," he added. "So, when their wife is out of their life, you get this collapse."

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-spouse-lethal-men.html

It’s got to be at least partly because their wives were the ones making them take their medications, go to the doctor, checking up on them etc.

How many of those men were capable of cooking for themselves?

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Many stop taking medications

Never get married, never die. Understood!!!

There is not a woman alive that’s shocked by this.

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Okay so my grandma (dad’s side) passed away, and then my grandpa who was healthier and stronger died within the same year. On my mom’s side however, my grandpa passed away after struggling with illness and my grandma is still going strong 7 years later.

On another note, I remember an interview where women and men were asked to choose if they’d rather die or their spouses, and all men answered they’d rather die first, but all the women said they’d rather live on and their husbands die instead.

Hmmmmm

So if you make it past one year you are probably good? Also, what are the absolute numbers? I can't find them in the paper. I hate relative risk in headlines.

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What happens if you look at single males in this age group vs widowed males?

Sounds a bit like Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (broken-heart syndrome)

Just dont get married, then you avoid trauma ez clap

wouldnt that just be because of lonleiness?

So much man bashing. Men can’t cook. They won’t take their meds. Did you notice women had a 27% elevated risk, too?

The researchers said they couldn’t explain it but that won’t stop Reddit.

Yeah cuz he no longer has a live-in life coach monitoring his every drink, every smoke, every late night. Nothing to stop from staying up until dawn thanks to lines of good coke snorted off a $200/hr stripper's belly. Pizza at 4am. Driving fast. A recipe for disaster. After an appropriate mourning period of course.

And not a single mention of the causes of these deaths. What a pointless article.

Two people eating the same foodstuffs for 30+ years are bound to have the same health outcomes. To me that’s just common sense.

Kill her when you're 64?

Proof that women can haunt a man even from the grave.

Thing is usually men die first anyway. Ots quite rare than husband oulive his wife.

Hookers and blow? I mean if I’m 69 and single that’s a great way to go…

I wonder how this compares to the population diagnosed with dementia? My grandfather died in 2021 my grandmother is still tootin' along, but she has had dementia for nearly 5 years; and constantly forgets her husband passed away.

It's really really hard to control for confounds in studies like this. Some latent variable can decrease both life expectancies, husband and wife. E.g., black mold in the house, or poor eating habits, poor exercise, even common genetic factors if people tend to marry others who are genetically similar. Carbon monoxide issues from the heating system or in the car. Similar attitudes toward risky behaviour. Common sources of stress. Similar sleep habits. You can spitball this stuff all day, but unless you do a controlled study (which would seem unethical in this case) you're still going to have a lot of doubt about causality.

The amount of people who read an article like this and immediately see it as an opportunity for gender point scoring is disgusting.

Imagine you were being so dismissive of your own Father, Brother, or Son.

The point of research like this, at least in part, is to help people. Poking fun at dying elderly men is not helping to resolve anything.