Men these days may on average live longer, but they’ll also spend a massive 15 years of their lives seriously ill. Find out what the top killers are for your age group and the ones ahead, and act now to ensure a long and healthy life!

According to the Office for National Statistics, a boy born today will live on average for 76 years while the average girl will survive until the age of 81. But while their lives may be longer than they were before, the average man can expect to be seriously or chronically ill for 15 years of his life, according to Men’s Health Forum figures.

Despite all of this, men are reluctant to make the few simple lifestyle changes that could literally add years to their lives, as well as improving its quality. They are also very unlikely to visit their GP, especially for a preventive health check. On average, a man aged 16 to 24 has a health check only once every seven years while a man aged 25-39 has a check once every five years.

But what should you be looking for? Read on for the most common cause of death for every age group.

Under-40s: Suicide

Since the late 1980s, the most common cause of death among men aged 15 to 44 has been suicide, and those figures are not improving: men now appear to be more vulnerable to death by suicide than ever before. Suicides by men make up 75 per cent of all suicides in the UK and suicide rates for men are higher than those for women across all age groups.

According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, depression hits men hard, probably because they believe that their feelings are unmanly. For men, depression is often accompanied by irritability, anger, risk-taking and aggression. And while there is also no evidence that more men get depressed than women, it is proven that they are less likely to talk about it or ask for any kind of help.

Instead, men often try to counter depressive feelings by losing themselves in their work. But this has a knock-on effect, isolating them from friendships and relationships and encouraging easy quick fixes such as food, alcohol, drugs and often, suicide.

How to prevent this from happening? Focus on maintaining a healthy social and mental life, don’t define yourself by your career (you can’t predict or blame yourself for its ups and downs) and if you do become depressed, let others help you rather than shutting them out.

In Your 50s: Cancer

Almost 40% of deaths in people in their 50s are caused by cancer. Nearly 22,000 men in the United Kingdom are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer each year and about 9,500 die; and the number of new cases diagnosed is expected to treble over the next 20 years. Plus, the incidence of testicular cancer has doubled in the past 20 years.

But the most common cause of cancer-related death among men in their 50s is actually lung cancer. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in the UK, with around 33,600 deaths each year and one person being diagnosed with lung cancer every fifteen minutes. More than 90 per cent of lung cancers are caused by smoking, but you’re not off the hook if you’re a non-smoker as even a couple of hours a week in a smoky pub could be fatal.

In fact, researchers say that lung cancer among non-smokers is much more common than people think. One recent study, for example, found that around 10 percent of lung cancer cases in males are among people who have never smoked. Secondhand smoke is classified as a Class A known human carcinogen – a cancer-causing cocktail of over 4000 harmful chemical compounds, more than 60 of which are known or suspected to cause cancer.

People exposed to secondhand smoke are over 25 per cent more likely to die prematurely, to develop lung cancer and heart disease, worsened asthma symptoms, chest problems, lung infections, dizziness, nausea and nose, throat and eye irritations.

The upshot? Stop smoking now, and reduce the time you spend around other smokers, to prevent lung cancer later.

In your 60s: Heart disease

It’s in your 60s that heart disease comes to a head, but the damage is done long before then – probably right now, in fact. Circulatory diseases are the most common cause of death among people in their 60s, although within this age group, heart disease as a cause of death decreases with age, and strokes increase.

Yet despite a widespread knowledge about heart disease and its deadly effects, men don’t seem to be sitting up and taking notice. An astonishing 45 percent of men are overweight and another 17 percent are obese, 28 percent smoke and 27 percent drink more than the recommended limits, while 36 per cent of men aged 16-24 drink excessively. All these are severe health risks and contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

And all it takes to slash your chances of this debilitating disease is the effort to make a few simple lifestyle changes; slowly build up the amount of time you spend exercising and gradually cut out unhealthy fatty foods, cigarettes and excessive alcohol.

In your 70s+: Pneumonia

Pneumonia is still a common disease, and its influence as a cause of death increases with age. A lung infection that usually develops after a severe cold or flu that just won’t get better, symptoms of pneumonia usually include fever, chest pains, shallow breathing and coughing. It affects people with a weak immune system who are generally frail and unhealthy.

So how do you avoid getting it? You can get vaccinated, but the most important thing you can do is make a promise now to keep healthy and active for life.

Tips to Stay Healthy:

1. Get outdoors. According to the Men’s Health Forum, research suggests that only a third of adult men are moderately active on a regular basis and just one in ten do regular vigorous exercise. In a working world that is increasingly confined to the office cubicle, the laptop and the airline seat, it’s easy to become inactive. So get walking, cycling, or even gardening.

2. Watch the booze. The same goes for drugs and excessive eating. If you want to cut down on any of these things and find that you cannot, then you should think about some kind of treatment.

3. Take a break. Overwork is one of the fastest routes there is to ill-health and burnout, but many men are stuck on the treadmill of believing that remorselessly long hours are the only way to get noticed and therefore the only way to get ahead. Whether you learn to take a ten-minute breather in a local park, or start using your whole holiday allowance to go somewhere new and exciting, the world will not implode if you turn your Blackberry off from time to time.