Studies done at John Moores University in Liverpool, England, showed there are some things to overcome if you are a male if you want to live as long as the women. They found that 70-year-old men had the hearts of 70-year-olds but their female peers had the hearts of 20-year-olds.
Researchers led by David Goldspink, professor of cell and molecular sports science at John Moores, studied 250 healthy but inactive volunteers ages 18-80 over a two-year period. They showed the power of the male heart fell 20-25 percent from ages 18-70, yet the power of the female heart remained undiminished.
Between ages 20-70, men lose a third of the contractile muscle cells in the walls of their hearts, while women lose hardly any. This is significant as there is a strong link between the number of these cells and the function of the heart. Nonetheless, men can't use this decline as an excuse. In a related study, they discovered the hearts of veteran male athletes were equal to those of inactive 20-year-old male undergraduates.