Mothers of Twins Live Longer and Healthier

By Alejandro Adrian LeMon, PhD News Editor on May 12, 2011

Mothers of twins live longer and healthier according to a study by the University of Utah. They also bear children at shorter intervals and have more babies compared with other mothers.

These findings do not necessarily mean that bearing twins is healthier. According to Ken R. Smith, author and professor of family & consumer studies, what this might indicate is that healthier women have a higher change of delivering twins.

Shannen Robson, first author of the study, says, �Having twins will not make you stronger or healthier, but stronger, healthier women are more likely to have twins naturally.�

�The prevailing view is that the burden of childbearing on women is heavier when bearing twins. But we found the opposite: women who naturally bear twins in fact live longer and are actually more fertile,� says Smith.

For the study, scientists used data on 58,786 non-polygamous Utah women who were born between 1807 and 1899, lived to age 50 and married once after 1850 to husbands who were alive when their wives were 50. Of those, 4,603 were the mothers of twins and 54,183 gave birth only to one baby at a time.

This is the largest fertility data of twin mothers ever published.

�Twinning� as a Possible Indicator of Health

�This study has been able to identify � and it�s a fairly novel result � another important factor that contributes to health and longevity in later years, namely, that women bearing twins appear to be healthier,� Smith says.

However, the study did not take into account women who died before menopause or even during childbirth. �We do know women who have twins, triplets and so on do have medical complications and their health is sometimes compromised,� Smith says.

�The women who have twins have a somewhat elevated risk of mortality over those [child-bearing] years, but the vast majority of those women reach age 50, and we�re able to observe that they have healthier lives.�

Previous studies have shown environmental factors - such as the mother�s good health or bearing children at later ages � increase the likelihood of twinning.

Smith says that the biological makeup determines how long and how healthy you are going to live. �The study�s twin moms �didn�t choose to have this capacity. They just did.�

Another factor to take into account is that the women in this study lived well before birth control and infertility treatments existed.

�We�re saying that women who twin naturally have something that makes them healthier,� says Smith. �We are able to see that in these ancestral women because they had many children and had no fertility treatments. They have left a legacy through their descendants who may all share this desirable trait of being healthier.�

However, it is still unclear from this study whether women who access infertility treatments and bear twins are healthier. Future studies on this population could answer this question. But at this time, �we�re not encouraging women to actively seek having twins so they can live longer. It�s not a conclusion we can draw,� says Smith.

Source: University of Utah