In the modern world, women live on average five years longer than men. There are many explanations for this, from the fact that female cells are better able to withstand stress, and ending with the thesis about a healthier lifestyle for women.
Among the hypotheses, there are those that put on the difference in the hormonal system. In other words, testosterone, the hormone of aggressiveness and male sexuality, shortens men's life.
The "testosterone" hypothesis has experimental evidence. It has been observed that castrated male animals do live longer. True, you cannot do such an experiment with people, so you have to rely on statistics, which are still not entirely clear. So, in 1969, American doctors, who had data on patients with removed testes, concluded that they lived 14 years longer. On the other hand, in 1993, an analysis of the biographies of Italian castrated singers did not reveal any discrepancies in life span with ordinary men.
A new study by South Korean scientists representing Incheon University, Seoul University and the National Institute of Korean History adds points to the "testosterone" hypothesis. They studied the historical records of eunuchs during the Joseon Dynasty. Korean emperors, like many kings around the world, used eunuchs for court service, and eunuchs were allowed to marry and adopt castrated boys as their own sons. It was just the genealogical book of the families of court eunuchs with data on 385 people who lived from the mid-16th to the mid-19th century.
However, there were not so many court castrates, about the date of birth and death of which we can say with complete certainty - eighty-one. The researchers, of course, compared them with men of similar social status at the same time (so as not to take into account the effect of the difference in lifestyle on its duration). In general, eunuchs lived 14 to 19 years longer on average, as reported in the journal Current Biology. Among them were long-livers: three eunuchs survived until the age of 100. And this is unusual when you consider that, for example, in modern Japan, centenary men are found in a ratio of 1: 3,500, and in the United States - 1: 4,400.
Of course, we are talking about purely statistical data that simply state that castrated men live longer (more precisely, they lived during the last dynasty of Korean emperors).
And although nothing is said about the mechanisms and reasons for this in the work, the explanation suggests itself. However, there is hardly a man in the modern world who would agree to buy an extra ten years of life at such a price. But it cannot be ruled out that in the future physiologists will find a way to suppress the harmful effects of testosterone on the male body …