Mothers of Twins live longer and are healthier

It was reported today that women who have twins naturally may live longer and be healthier when compared with non-twin-bearing mothers.  This study which was released online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, focused on natural fertility and had statistics on 58,786 women who were born between 1807 and 1899. This particular group didn’t have fertility treatments or artificial birth control available. Each woman lived till at least 50 years old and were married at least once. Of those women in the study, 4,603 had twins and 54,183 were regular one child births.

The information came from the Utah Population Database. The researchers compared the moms of twins with the moms of those having one baby at a time and looked for differences in life span, number of children, time between pregnancies and length of fertility, all measures of health. Women who naturally beared twins in fact lived longer and were actually more fertile – go figure! It is a very interesting study because even those conducting the study figured it would be the opposite of the result.