A big part of the difference comes from human males taking part in riskier activities, having a higher suicide rate and generally a less healthy lifestyle. Those are statistically significant differences, but they don’t affect individual person. If you are a male, do some reasonable physical exercise and have good food habit while avoiding things that are obviously risky, a big part of the difference vannishes.
And even if lifestyle factors account for a big part of the difference, it sounds like you believe there’s still some difference, and it seems like any difference would be relevant to someone seeking to maximize their longevity.
Cancer and heart disease kill most people but kill mainly old people, so their impact on life expectancy is less significant per death than suicide or unintended injuries.
I don’t have stats but the link you give seems to be supporting my point : suicide and unintentional injuries amount to 10% of males death and at most 5% of female deaths. Quick back of the envelope calculation : assuming average age of death by suicide/accident for males is 30, while “all other causes” average age of death is 80, you’d get a life expectation of $0.9\times 80 + 0.1\times 30= 75$ for males and $0,95\times 80+0,05\times 30=77,5$ for females. You can play around with the number a bit, but the crux is that younger deaths weight a lot in the average and men tends to die a lot more at a young age due to suicide and riskier activities.
I’m totally not going to look for the relevant stats because I have papers to grade, but my prior is also that men are also more susceptible to heart diseases/cancers in part due to lifestyle choices (ie, eating more meat, smoking, drinking...).
I think lifestyle factors account for most of the difference, and that even if it not all the difference, the health risk associated with sex transition should outweigh any potential gains (I’m also very skeptical that hormone treatment+surgery could really help since they would not affect your basic genetic profile).
(note that this discussion is only valid in the framework of longevity—I’m not discussing the short term potential benefits of transitioning in term of mental health).
I doubt this factor is really significant. A quick google search only yielded results for breast cancers, and glancing over at the abstracts I’m skeptical those studies are strong enough to prove a real effect for size (they seem to find an effect for BMI, but BMI affect more than just the number of cells in the body so it is not really significant for our discussion).
Also in the context of health benefit associated with transition this is irrelevant because transitioning will not change your body size...
A big part of the difference comes from human males taking part in riskier activities, having a higher suicide rate and generally a less healthy lifestyle. Those are statistically significant differences, but they don’t affect individual person. If you are a male, do some reasonable physical exercise and have good food habit while avoiding things that are obviously risky, a big part of the difference vannishes.
Stats like https://www.cdc.gov/women/lcod/2017/all-races-origins/index.htm vs https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/lcod/men/2017/all-races-origins/index.htm lead me to believe that heart disease and cancer are more significant killers than risky activities or suicide. Could you share where you’ve found stats broken down by activity riskiness, suicide rate, and lifestyle healthiness?
And even if lifestyle factors account for a big part of the difference, it sounds like you believe there’s still some difference, and it seems like any difference would be relevant to someone seeking to maximize their longevity.
Cancer and heart disease kill most people but kill mainly old people, so their impact on life expectancy is less significant per death than suicide or unintended injuries.
I don’t have stats but the link you give seems to be supporting my point : suicide and unintentional injuries amount to 10% of males death and at most 5% of female deaths.
Quick back of the envelope calculation : assuming average age of death by suicide/accident for males is 30, while “all other causes” average age of death is 80, you’d get a life expectation of $0.9\times 80 + 0.1\times 30= 75$ for males and $0,95\times 80+0,05\times 30=77,5$ for females.
You can play around with the number a bit, but the crux is that younger deaths weight a lot in the average and men tends to die a lot more at a young age due to suicide and riskier activities.
I’m totally not going to look for the relevant stats because I have papers to grade, but my prior is also that men are also more susceptible to heart diseases/cancers in part due to lifestyle choices (ie, eating more meat, smoking, drinking...).
I think lifestyle factors account for most of the difference, and that even if it not all the difference, the health risk associated with sex transition should outweigh any potential gains (I’m also very skeptical that hormone treatment+surgery could really help since they would not affect your basic genetic profile).
(note that this discussion is only valid in the framework of longevity—I’m not discussing the short term potential benefits of transitioning in term of mental health).
Also, bigger bodies = more cells that can end up turning into tumors and such.
I doubt this factor is really significant. A quick google search only yielded results for breast cancers, and glancing over at the abstracts I’m skeptical those studies are strong enough to prove a real effect for size (they seem to find an effect for BMI, but BMI affect more than just the number of cells in the body so it is not really significant for our discussion).
Also in the context of health benefit associated with transition this is irrelevant because transitioning will not change your body size...
See e.g. this.
Yeah I know, I could’ve pointed out the body size effect to nim too.