The average man is doomed to a shorter life simply by being male. Recommendations to improve men's health such as more vitamins, more exercise, and better behavior have not changed this. Do women know something that men don't that allows women to live longer? It should be noted that married men live longer than single men, so whatever women do for themselves must rub off on their mates.
If one looks at mortality tables, men have a higher death rate from most causes. Men have an extremely higher death rate in the cardiovascular area. This suggests that it is time to redouble efforts at cutting out the dietary fats, cake and cookies! Time for more cardiovascular exercise: open the jar of mayonaise for your wife, take out the trash, go to the store! Another area of higher risk for men is their dramatically higher suicide rate as compared with women. Women might help by cheering up their men and keeping them happier. Given that women on average live five years longer, they might spend a bit of their time improving quality of life for their shorter-lived men. On the other hand, I suppose if a man is making life into hell for a women, then her goal will be to have a breather in the last five years after the man dies.
Information Sources:
Wired News: A Few Ways to Win Mortality War http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,56476,00.html
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/
Table 2.15-- CAUSE OF DEATH, BY SEX: 2000 http://www.state.hi.us/dbedt/db01/02/021501.pdf
NCHS - FASTATS - Life Expectancy http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lifexpec.htm
(This is a shorter version of an original post from 2003)