Men forget far more than women - study

One of the largest health studies ever has found men are far more forgetful than women. Photo / Thinkstock

No matter how old they are, men are much more forgetful than women - research reveals.

In fact, even the researchers were surprised by how forgetful their results showed men to be.

"It was surprising to see that men forget more than women," said Professor Jostein Holmen, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

"This has not been documented before.

"It was also surprising to see that men are just as forgetful whether they are 30 or 60 years old. The results were unambiguous."

Professor Holmen and his team asked nine questions about how well people think they remember as part of a large health study conducted in Norway.

The study, called HUNT3, is one of the largest health studies ever performed, with answers from more than 48,000 people.

The participants were asked how often they had problems remembering things, whether they had problems with remembering names and dates, if they could remember what they did one year ago and if they were able to remember details from conversations.

Men reported the most problems for eight out of nine of the questions.

Professor Holmen said: "We have speculated a lot about why men report more frequent problems with remembering than women do, but have not been able to find an explanation. This is still an unsolved mystery."

The researchers discovered that while women have much better memories than men, they do struggle to remember names and dates.

They also found that the people who are the most highly educated forget the least, while those with the least education forget the most.

People who suffer from anxiety and depression are also more forgetful.

The researchers found that for both men and women the prevalence of memory problems increases after the age of 60.

They are now attempting to establish whether there is a link between forgetfulness in youth and dementia in old age.

- DAILY MAIL