Why Do Females Have Higher Estrogen Than Males?

[Atalanta]

Wouldn't surprise me if those are really important factors. Social connectedness having one of the strongest associations with longevity.

Also iron - women have a regular way to dispose of excess iron for a few decades. Don't women's rates of iron-excess diseases like CVD begin to approach those of men after menopause?

Even so, women still live longer than men.

 

[schultz]

How can it be progesterone when women's ovaries stop making progesterone after menopause?

If a woman becomes menopausal at 50 and lives to 90, how can progesterone be the reason? After menopause, women make less progesterone than men of the same age. Ray Peat himself has said that after menopause women actually have a higher ratio of estrogen to progesterone than before menopause.

Progesterone, not estrogen, is the coronary protection factor of women.
In the 1940s, around the time that Hans Selye was reporting that estrogen causes shock, and that progesterone protects against many stress-related problems, the anthropologist Ashley Montague published The Natural Superiority of Women. Later, as I looked at the history of endocrine research, it seemed apparent that progesterone was responsible for many of the biological advantages of females, such as a longer average life-span, while testosterone was responsible for men’s advantage in muscular strength.

From Politics and Science Progesterone Series:
"...when the follicle ovulates releases the egg to be fertilized along with the burst of estrogen, then this area turns into steroid producing cells and reduces the production of estrogen relative to the total steroids and progesterone is the main steroid produced from that time on. And in humans that is the basic source of progesterone for the first nine or 10 weeks of pregnancy and then the placenta takes over production and corpus luteum fades out but with each pregnancy that some of those cells remain in the ovary. So a woman who has been pregnant eight times in her lifetime will have a higher residual progesterone levels and will live much longer than an average woman who hasn’t had so many pregnancies. They saw the same thing in animals with the more litters the animals had, the younger their tissues were at a given age."

Residual is the key word in that paragraph.

 

[Atalanta]

i already pointed this out, females do NOT have higher estrogen than males.

In some cases, males have higher than females. Many older men have higher estrogen levels than their wives. Many, even MOST.

Weird how women have more autoimmune problems, smaller livers, poorer thyroids, and yet live longer than men...

My theory is it's all social dynamics. Men are lone wolves and have few friends by and large. Women are social connectors. I think that explains it. I honestly think these factors matter MUCH more than many other things, such as diet and nutrition and exercise.

Ray Peat says the ratio of estrogen to progesterone is important. After menopause, women make less progesterone than men, so older women have higher ratios of estrogen to progesterone than older men, even if the man's estrogen level is higher.

 

[Atalanta]

Progesterone, not estrogen, is the coronary protection factor of women.
In the 1940s, around the time that Hans Selye was reporting that estrogen causes shock, and that progesterone protects against many stress-related problems, the anthropologist Ashley Montague published The Natural Superiority of Women. Later, as I looked at the history of endocrine research, it seemed apparent that progesterone was responsible for many of the biological advantages of females, such as a longer average life-span, while testosterone was responsible for men’s advantage in muscular strength.

From Politics and Science Progesterone Series:
"...when the follicle ovulates releases the egg to be fertilized along with the burst of estrogen, then this area turns into steroid producing cells and reduces the production of estrogen relative to the total steroids and progesterone is the main steroid produced from that time on. And in humans that is the basic source of progesterone for the first nine or 10 weeks of pregnancy and then the placenta takes over production and corpus luteum fades out but with each pregnancy that some of those cells remain in the ovary. So a woman who has been pregnant eight times in her lifetime will have a higher residual progesterone levels and will live much longer than an average woman who hasn’t had so many pregnancies. They saw the same thing in animals with the more litters the animals had, the younger their tissues were at a given age."

Residual is the key word in that paragraph.

In the US, white women live longer than black women even though black women have more children. Asian women also live longer than black women even though Asian women have fewer children than BW.

 

[tara]

Even so, women still live longer than men.

Sure, but maybe the overall the differences in life expectancy come from a combination of the accumulated differences in mortality rates from eg:

• stress of relative social isolation (this might be the most important one)
• cultural tendency to neglect health care/push the body beyond reasonable capacity
• being used as expendable components in the MIC and some other industries
• CVD up to at least fifty yrs, and then decreasing but still significant (difference) for the next decade or two
• other damage from lower progesterone or higher estrogen: progesterone ratio before 50 that leaves vulnerability to various things in their 60s and 70s
  
• similarly damage from iron before 50 that confers vulnerabilities that they succumb to in their 60s and 70s if not earlier
• and probably other social and biological factors ...

 

[tara]

In the US, white women live longer than black women even though black women have more children. Asian women also live longer than black women even though Asian women have fewer children than BW.

Yeah. Racism kills even when economic status and other obvious factors are taken into account - not just in the US. Some of it no doubt systemic institutional racism - eg where I am people of colour are less likely to get timely and lifesaving treatment for heart disease in the public health system than white people, and it's not just about income (though obviously that plays an important role too). But also the social stresses of having to face daily personal racism must take a toll in stress on the health.

 

[beachbum]

In the US, white women live longer than black women even though black women have more children. Asian women also live longer than black women even though Asian women have fewer children than BW.

Maybe just the stress from raising all the children. I know I would be stress just with one. Then what Tara said too.
IMO..it is definitely stress of any kind number one culprit.

 

[tara]

Maybe just the stress from raising all the children. I know I would be stress just with one.

Yeah, add that to the list - all the work and economic demands of raising lots of children in a society where parenting work is not well supported can have a lot of extra stresses attached, esp. if one is not in the economically well-resourced minority. There can be some health benefits too from regular close contact with young people, and the balance probably falls differently depending on context - like how much time you can make to spend with them.

 

[beachbum]

Yeah, add that to the list - all the work and economic demands of raising lots of children in a society where parenting work is not well supported can have a lot of extra stresses attached, esp. if one is not in the economically well-resourced minority. There can be some health benefits too from regular close contact with young people, and the balance probably falls differently depending on context - like how much time you can make to spend with them.

Very well put.

 

[Baltazar]

Because of the apple in the Bible