Overlooked for Too Long: Women and Longevity

Until the 1990s, the National Institutes of Health exclusively used only men for medical testing and clinical trials — even the lab rats were all male.

That fact was one of the many surprises uncovered in the latest series of the popular "Century Lives" podcast produced by the Stanford Center on Longevity. Season 7 returns on Jan. 22 with "Century Lives: The 51%" exploring women's health and equity over six episodes. Topics range from heart disease as the leading cause of death in women to caregiving responsibilities that typically fall on women and the financial hardships that may bring.

"I think everyone knows that women live longer than men in virtually every country in the world," podcast host Ken Stern explains in a video interview. (In the United States, men's life expectancy is 74.8 years, and 80.2 years for women.) "But it's less well known and still almost universally true that women live close to 25% more years in poor health. That's across the lifespan, not just in later life. We wanted to know why." 

In Episode 1, titled "Overlooked and Underfunded," co-producer Alice Winkler along with Kerry Thompson and Erin Bump examine the hot topic of how the prestigious NIH overlooked half the population as recently as three decades ago.

"It was just shocking how recent the change has been," Winkler explains. "That era that we looked at in the 1990s was well into my lifetime and women were still not being looked at in clinical studies. I found it a little embarrassing that I didn't know it."

The episode also includes interviews with Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, on her legislative efforts in the '90s to include women in medical studies as well as Vivian Pinn, M.D., the first head of the Office of Research on Women's Health at NIH.

Upcoming episodes explore the history and debate behind hormone therapy related to menopause (released Feb. 5), the dangers of cardiovascular disease in women (Feb. 19), an exploration of autoimmune diseases and their predominance in women (March 5), the financial and health strains of caregiving (March 19) and a doctor's innovative "femtech" idea to analyze menstrual blood (April 2).

Other surprises for Winkler over the season: "I didn't know that women made up the vast majority of people with autoimmune disease — 80% of autoimmune diseases are in women. I knew a little bit more about cardiac disease and the differences with how women present … but medical schools still do not teach students about the differences in the how health is different between men and women."

Episode 6 focuses on entrepreneur Sara Naseri who has developed a way to study women's menstrual blood for research and preventative care, something she found nobody had thought to examine in the past. During a literature review, she was able to find only one case of a forensics examiner studying menstrual blood — and that was to help with a murder examination. Her story of the creation of Qvin is one of creativity and roadblocks. "Part of the story was actually about how difficult it was for her to get FDA clearance for these tasks," Stern says.

While "Century Lives" has a different theme each season, including profiles of people living past age 100 (hence the name of the series) and geographical areas worldwide where the many of the older residents are healthy, Stern says the overall purpose of the podcast that started in late 2021 is to "humanize and personalize the opportunities and challenges around longevity." One of the greatest achievements in the 20th century was to extend people's lifespan, and the Stanford Center on Longevity's mission is to make sure those additional years are positive, not just longer.

"How do we make our society more healthy so people have longer, more productive and more equitable lives?" he explains. "We've done stories on different communities that have long lives and why there are areas that don't, whether by income or race or other reasons. It's become one of the central organizing principles — how to rethink society."

Overall, Stern finds optimism in the podcast and its examination of multiple factors on aging. "The interesting thing about longevity is that our long-term health is affected by so much, everything from income to geography to where we live to lifelong learning to how we organize our neighborhoods and how we interact with people. It's a story of society [and] the exciting part is that there are great stories and important stories to tell."

Winkler agrees: "There's no way to listen to the women who have really been at the forefront of these changes and not feel optimistic. There are people who are pushing who have faced tremendous obstacles and have really been determined. That's inspiring [but] at the same time, there was a sadder side in every one of these episodes about overlooking women for so long. I'm inspired and hopeful and glad that change is afoot and also terribly disappointed at the reality of where we are and how much farther there is still to go."

Amy Nelson As an editor and journalist, Amy Nelson seeks out impactful stories to share with others. For nearly 20 years, she was the features editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where she worked collaboratively with a talented team to cover health and wellness, style, home and garden, travel, technology, entertainment, and other lifestyle topics. She also has been editor of Spaces magazine and most recently acted as the editor of Minnesota Monthly magazine before coming to Next Avenue as the health and caregiving digital editor. Over her career, she been able to interview celebrities from Prince to Roger Goodell and travel to exotic locations including Oman, Morocco, and the country of Georgia. Follow her on social media channels at @amykaynelson. Read More