London - It is common knowledge that when it comes to reaching the impressive age of 100, women hugely outnumber men.
But researchers have discovered a somewhat sobering fact for women centenarians – the men who do manage to reach the milestone tend to be healthier than them.
Despite being outnumbered by female centenarians by more than four to one, 100-year-old men were found to be less affected by serious diseases, a major study found.
And 100-year-olds of both sexes were healthier than those up to 25 years their junior, when it came to diabetes, cancer, stroke and coronary heart disease. Researchers believe that if a person has lived that long without being affected, they may have an in-built resistance against such conditions.
Another surprising finding was that six percent of centenarians are smokers.
Researchers at King’s College London studied 11 048 centenarians – 8 982 women and 2 102 men – reaching 100 between 1995 and 2013.
Almost half of the women – 46 percent –had hypertension, or high blood pressure, compared with 16 percent of men, and 63 percent had diseases of the nervous system compared with 49 percent of men.
Dementia was recorded in 12 percent of women compared with six percent of men, the research, in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also revealed.
Daily Mail