The LETHAL mix of WINE O’CLOCK and long working days

As experts say women will soon have the same life expectancy as men, know the unhealthy habits that could be killing you...

SITTING with her hospital consultant, Anita Brown felt overwhelmed by fear. The cancer found in her bladder had spread to her lymph nodes, liver and bones. Too aggressive to be operated on, the only treatment available was palliative chemotherapy to slow its growth.

Without it, her consultant said gently, Anita was unlikely to survive longer than a few months. ‘I couldn’t stop crying,’ says Anita, 47. ‘I wanted to grow old with my husband, to see my son marry and meet my grandchildren. I was heartbroken.’

Two years on from her terminal diagnosis, chemotherapy has brought her precious time, but the married mother of one knows she is lucky to be alive.

‘With every day I feel more scared. Every birthday, and every family gathering, I wonder if it will be the last,’ she says. What makes Anita’s situation even more difficult is that she feels certain she knows what caused the disease.

Smoking is the biggest cause of bladder cancer, responsible for around half of all cases in Ireland — and Anita had been smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 25 years.

Although there’s no proven link, she also worries that her heavy drinking may have contributed to the problem.

Bladder cancer is three times more common in men, who have in the past always been heavier smokers than women. But a closing of the gap between the number of male and female smokers means that women such as Anita may, in coming decades, start to redress the balance.

Her story starkly illustrates a recent study by Imperial College London, which found thousands of women are dying younger because they have adopted unhealthy habits historically associated with men.

THE report, published in medical journal The Lancet, shows that women’s lifestyle choices are increasing their risk of premature death. It reveals that out of 25 wealthy Western nations, Britain and Ireland have the fourth-highest premature death rate for women from diabetes, heart disease, cancer and lung disease — conditions largely driven by smoking, drinking and obesity.

For Irish men, the chance of dying early from one of these diseases is still significantly higher than for women, but men of other nationalities fare even worse, so Irish men have only the 13th-highest premature death rate.

Lead author Majid Ezzati, a professor at Imperial College London, said the outcome of the study could be explained in part by social equality, which is advancing faster in somewhere like Ireland than elsewhere.

But it seems that as women become breadwinners and conquer boardrooms, many have picked up less desirable traits too.

Many of the habits and pastimes traditionally associated with career success and work outside the home — from indulgent business dinners and drinks with colleagues, to spending hours sitting at a desk — are now recognised as terribly unhealthy.

Men have long suffered the illeffects of this lifestyle, and now researchers say women are starting to feel them too. In short, it is the one element of equality that women never asked for.

‘If women live like men, they will die like men,’ said Prof Ezzati.

Certainly, there has been a profound sociological shift linked to growing equality and more women in the workforce. Irish women now drink as much alcohol as men, and according to Alcohol Action Ireland, alcoholic liver disease (ALD) rates are increasing rapidly in this country. The greatest level of increase is among 15-to-34-yearolds, who historically had the lowest rates of liver disease.

Also in Ireland, the proportion of alcohol-related deaths from cancer is higher than the European average, at 38.8% for Irish women (versus 31% in Europe).

Worldwide, men smoke nearly five times as much as women, but in affluent Western European countries there is now nearly no difference between the two groups.

In fact, lung cancer rates are still peaking among women, while they started falling for men in the 1980s.

This is because women, who took up smoking in large numbers in the s when it became more socially acceptable, were slower to give up when the full health impact was realised.

And women are as affected as men — if not more so — by the obesity crisis. Irish women now rank third in Europe for having the highest body mass index (BMI).

Then there is the impact of sleep deprivation caused by stressful lifestyles — one study found those who slept less than five hours a night doubled their risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

A desk-bound sedentary life, meanwhile, has also been shown to help reduce life expectancy.

By contrast, working in the home, as many women did in previous generations, tends to lead to a healthier lifestyle thanks to moderate physical activity and the ability to cook healthy meals.

In an inevitable consequence of role changes, the gender gap in life expectancy has started to close. In 1971 women could expect to outlive men by 6.3 years; by 2016 that figure was just 3.6 years.

ADVANCES in social equality have unfortunately had a deep impact on female health,’ says Dr Elle Boag, social psychologist. ‘From the “have-it-all” 1980s when more women started to have careers, we have been increasingly reliant on unhealthy ready meals.

‘The ladette culture of the Nineties encouraged excessive drinking, and the recent trend for “wine o’clock” has made women feel they need a drink to relax.

‘With increasingly hectic lifestyles — women are, after all, still expected to do the majority of household chores and childcare as well as pursue careers — cigarettes also continue to be props that keep women going through stressful days.’

For many women, smoking and especially drinking are still a mark of liberation. It’s an association that has been explicitly promoted by advertisers in the past, who have targeted these products at working women with disposable income.

Yet biological differences between the sexes mean bad lifestyle habits can hit women harder. Higher levels of body fat mean women’s bodies are less able to digest alcohol, while research has shown that a larger waist-to-hip ratio is a bigger heart attack risk factor for women than men.

And, says Dr Agne Zemaite, ‘some studies have shown that women who have alcohol problems have higher death rates due to suicide, accidents and other health-related issues — more than twice the rate of men.’

None of which Anita, who lives with husband Tim, 47, an engineer, had considered before her diagnosis.

‘I was brought up to believe my gender was irrelevant,’ she says. ‘If men around me were smoking, why shouldn’t I? Now, I’m appalled and wish more women smokers knew they risk of getting a cancer that’s still known as an “old man’s disease”.’

Anita started smoking aged 19, in 1989, when a cigarette was seen as a stylish accessory.

A bar manager at the time, she says alcohol also offered ‘relief’ from responsibilities.

I could drink most men under the table, and felt I was encouraged to do so during the 1990s,’ she says. ‘I didn’t see why I should have only a half-pint because I was a woman.’

In her 30s, she swapped pubs for drinking at home: ‘My girlfriends and I would enjoy Prosecco, vodka and drinking games including drunken dares. My son, then a teenager, was mortified.’

Aged 41, she started a job in charge of a team tasked with delivering valuable cars to auction. ‘It was stressful,’ says Anita, who met husband Tim the same year.

‘Tim smoked too, and we shared wine every evening.’

In 2015, Anita discovered blood in her urine and developed pain in her stomach. Initially dismissed as bladder stones and an infection, in March 2016 an ultrasound revealed a cancerous mass in her bladder.

‘At first I was told the tumour could be cut out, but a subsequent CT scan and biopsy revealed the cancer had spread. My doctor said it could hopefully be kept at bay