UK Marriage News
Forget massages, hot baths and soothing music - the key to beating stress is as simple as a happy marriage says the Daily Mail. Research shows that being in a loving relationship makes it easier to cope with the stresses and strains of working life. Contrary to the popular perception that single people have a carefree lifestyle, it is those who are in long-term relationships who are most laid back.
Psychologist Dr Roxane Gervais monitored the stress levels of more than 400 nurses working in Yorkshire hospitals. She found that those who were married, or in a steady relationship, were least affected by the strains of the job. Single people and those who were widowed felt stress more keenly, while those who were divorced were the least relaxed of all, the British Psychological Society's annual conference in York heard.
It is thought that married people benefit from simply being able to talk through their day with someone after work. Such support may be particularly valuable in occupations such as nursing, in which emotions have to be suppressed during working hours. Dr Gervais said: "When a patient dies, a nurse can't show any emotion. If there is a crisis, they get all the flak from the public and have to hold it in. They don't really have an outlet at work but when they get home, they do have an outlet." She added that those looking for ways to reduce workplace stress may be better off focusing on the needs of single workers, rather than those who were married or had children.
The study is far from the first to show that marriage is good for health. Previous research has shown that those who marry are far more likely to live longer than those who never tie the knot.
Want to live to a healthy 85? Stay trim
Lindsey Tanner
Associated Press
Chicago
One of the largest, longest studies of aging found one more reason to stay trim and active: It could greatly raise your odds of living to at least age 85.
In fact, chances of being healthy in old age are better than even for people who at mid-life have normal blood pressure, good grip strength and several other physical characteristics associated with being fit and active.
These include normal levels of blood glucose and fats in the blood called triglycerides - both also associated with avoiding excess calories and eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
Other habits long linked with good health and well-being - avoiding smoking and excess alcohol, and being married - also improved chances of surviving well into the 80s.
The study involved 5,820 Japanese-American men from the Hawaiian island of Oahu, who were followed for up to 40 years, but the researchers said the results likely apply to women and men of other ethnic heritage, too.
"There appears to be a lot we can do about modifying our risk and increasing the odds for aging more healthfully," said lead author Dr. Bradley Willcox, a scientist at the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu.
"It's good news because it really gives you something to zero in on if we want to be healthy at older age," Willcox said.
The results appear in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study shows "that you can still live healthy until age 85 if you live right," said Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of preventive cardiology at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.
Most factors the researchers identified as contributing to longevity have long been associated with healthy living but the study does a good job of "putting it together in one package" and showing the combined benefits, said Lavie, who was not involved in the research.
While Japanese-American men tend to be thinner and healthier than the general U.S. population, Lavie said it makes sense to think that the same factors that influence their survival would also affect other people.
The study notes that people aged 85 and older are the fastest-growing age group in most industrialized countries and are among the largest consumers of health care resources.
Figuring out how to help people remain healthy as they age is thus a major research priority, the study authors said.
It's also a priority for doctors with middle-aged patients who want to know how to survive into old age, said Dr. Gary Schaer, a cardiologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
"This kind of paper directly affects how I take care of patients," Schaer said. "It's a really important study."
Study participants were in their 50s on average when the research began; 3,369 or 58 percent died before age 85. Health was evaluated at the start and then at eight follow-up examinations.
Eleven percent - 655 men - reached a milestone the researchers dubbed "exceptional survival." That was reaching age 85 without any mental or physical impairment, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, Parkinson's disease and diabetes.
The men who had none of nine disease risk factors at mid-life had a nearly 70 percent chance of living to age 85 and a 55 percent chance of reaching the exceptional milestone.
By contrast, those with six or more risk factors at mid-life had a 22 percent chance of living to age 85 and a less than 10 percent chance of exceptional survival.
The nine mid-life risk factors were: being overweight, meaning a body-mass index of 25 or more; having high blood glucose levels, which can lead to diabetes; having high triglyceride levels, which contribute to heart disease; having high blood pressure; having low grip strength - unable to squeeze at least 86 pounds of pressure with a handheld device; smoking; consuming three or more alcoholic drinks daily; not graduating from high school; and being unmarried.
"These risk factors can be easily measured in a clinical setting and are, for the most part, modifiable," the researchers said.
The study was paid for by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Hawaii Community Foundation.
Study Shows Divorce Has a Long-Term Impact on Women
RadioIowa.com
Oct 31, 2006
Lorenz says it's not just an attitude thing -- life was harder for the divorced women. The divorced women had more "negative life events" happen -- having kids get in trouble, a hard time keeping a job...divorced women had a higher incidence of that kind of thing happening to them, and that contributed to their feelings of distress ten years later.
Lorenz says the researchers then had another set of groups to compare, divorced women who remained single, and those who remarried. The women who remarried had better financial circumstances, and in that way the quality of their lives improved. Still, it wasn't a cure-all and their health wasn't as good a decade later as the women who'd never been divorced. Lorenz says that's probably because the rural women who got divorced had trouble finding jobs good enough to give them consistent healthcare coverage, and went without care for at least some of the time in their lives.
The study will continue for at least another eight years, and the research group recently got a big federal grant. He hopes to go back one more time to the original parents in the study as they approach retirement age, and find out how they're coping with the end of their careers and adjusting to retirement, so they can link those answers to the events that happened to the people earlier in their lives.
"We're approaching twenty years," Lorenz reflects. The kids in the study are almost as old as the parents were when it began, and the parents are getting old. He adds the researchers are about the same age as the parents, and notes that for him at least, the end of the study will be a retirement project.
Divorced Women Have More Illness
Associated Press
October 31, 2006
DES MOINES, Iowa - Women may give up more than a husband by divorcing - they may also lose some of their good health, according to a study by Iowa State University.
The study, spanning 10 years, focused on what happens to rural women's health after their marriage ends, compared with women who stay married, said Fred Lorenz, who co-authored the report.
"What we found was that the act of getting a divorce produced no immediate effects on (physical) health, but it did have effects on mental health," Lorenz said. "Ten years later, those effects on mental health led to effects in physical health."
The findings came from data gathered from rural Iowa women who were interviewed three times in the early 1990s, and again in 2001. All 416 women interviewed were the mothers of adolescent children when the study began. Among them, 102 women were recently divorced.
During the years immediately after divorce - from 1991 to 1994 - the divorced women reported 7 percent higher levels of psychological distress than married women. They did not report any differences in physical illness at that time.
A decade later, however, the divorced women reported 37 percent more physical illness, but no difference in psychological stress that could be directly linked to the divorce, said Lorenz, who co-authored the study with K.A.S. Wickrama, Rand Conger and Glen Elder. The research was conducted out of the Institute for Social and Behavioral Research based at Iowa State.
The women in the study marked off illnesses from a list of 46 choices - ranging from the common cold and sore throat to heart conditions and cancer.
Lorenz said it appears there is a link between the higher number of physical illnesses and the different stresses associated with divorce, including financial problems, demotions, layoffs and parenting problems. He added that divorced women, especially in rural areas, have poor job opportunities and fewer support systems.
Wickrama said the women also suffer stress from having to make changes in housing, insurance, transportation and time with children.
"It looks like (divorced women) are trapped in this vicious circle of financial problems and other stressful life events ..." he said in a statement.
Lorenz said divorced women in rural areas may not have jobs that offer quality health care, and they may put off going to the doctor for preventive care because of financial constraints.
The researchers adjusted the data for age, remarriage, education, income and prior health.
By 2001, 40 of the divorced women had remarried or were living with a partner, and the study found positive influences on the women's health, Wickrama said.
"We found that divorced individuals who remarried indirectly decreased the risk of health problems because they saw beneficial influences on their financial difficulties," he said.
The study, titled "The Short-Term and Decade-Long Effects of Divorce on Women's Midlife Health," was published last summer in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. The research was part of an ISU study of romantic relationships and marriage in middle-aged adults that began in 1989 in an eight-county area.
Linda Waite, who co-authored the book "The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially," said many studies have shown that when women are divorced or widowed they see a decline in economic well-being, but the long-term effects of the stress of divorce on health is important new research.
She said it can help friends, family, and the legal and medical communities become aware "that divorce often creates a cascade of negative experiences and events for the families involved, with increased need for help, intervention and support."
Divorced Men at Greater Risk of Death
United Press International
Copenhagen, Denmark
June 1, 2006
A study in Denmark finds the death rate among divorced men in their 40s is twice as high as it is for other men in the same age group.
Alcohol-related disease and suicide accounted for many of the deaths, and one-quarter were caused by heart disease, the Copenhagen Post reported.
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen tracked 2,500 men born in 1953. The study included information about marriage and divorce among their parents and grandparents.
Rikke Lund, a senior researcher who was in charge of the study, said that given the findings, Denmark should do more to keep marriages together. Lund said that in Norway MANDATORY counseling for couples considering divorce has led to 25 to 30 percent of couples changing their minds.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International.
Marital Strife Can Delay Surgical Wound Healing
Michael Smith
MedPageToday.com
December 05, 2005
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec. 5 - Even if spouses usually get along well, the stress caused by a half-hour argument can slow healing of a surgical wound by as much as a day, researchers here reported.
If they are generally hostile, the delay in wound healing can be doubled, according to Ronald Glaser, Ph.D., and Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, Ph.D., both of Ohio State here.
One implication of the finding, reported in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, is that marital stress plays an important role in recovery from surgery, Dr. Kiecolt-Glaser said.
"This shows why it is so important that people be psychologically prepared for their surgeries," she added.
Dr. Kiecolt-Glaser said the study, combined with previous work, suggests that "hospitals need to modify existing practices in ways that will reduce stress prior to surgery."
Reducing pre-surgical stress, both researchers said, would lead to shorter hospital stays, lower medical bills, and a reduced risk of nosocomial infection.
With colleagues, the researcher recruited 42 married couples, who had been married on average for 12.5 years, and admitted them to Ohio State's general clinical research center for two 24-hour visits, separated by two months.
At each visit, both members of the couple were subjected to eight small wounds, using a suction blister device. The epidermis roofing the blisters was removed and a plastic template with eight wells was taped over the wounds.
During the first visit, subjects were asked to complete questionnaires designed to gauge their level of stress. Then they were asked to engage in two 10-minute discussions intended to allow the researchers to assess their behavior when they were soliciting and offering social support.
The procedure was identical during the second visit, except that the 10-minute discussions were about areas of disagreement, Dr. Kiecolt-Glaser said - "something that inherently had an emotional element."
Few of the interactions were classified as hostile, the researchers noted. Even during the conflict discussions, half of the couples had seven or fewer hostile behaviors on the Rapid Marital Interaction Coding System, which discriminates well between distressed and non-distressed couples.
However, couples whose hostility levels were above the median were classed as "high-hostile," with the remainder being "low-hostile." The researchers noted that their sample is probably slightly skewed away from truly dysfunctional relationships, because people in these marriages are less likely to volunteer together for scientific research.
The study found:
- On average, the high-hostile subjects took a day longer to heal than the low-hostile subjects after the social support visit (six days versus five) and at the conflict visit (seven days versus six), the researchers found.
- Overall - if the nature of the visit was ignored -- the median time to healing was two days longer in the high-hostile behavior group.
- Independent of which group the couples were classed in, the time to healing following the conflict visit was six days, compared to five days after the social support visit.
The researchers also found differences in the production of three cytokines - interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1-beta, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha.
Both groups had increases in circulating levels of plasma IL-6 and TNF-alpha after the conflict session compared to the social support session, the researcher found. However, the high-hostile couples had greater increases.
For example, low-hostile participants increased IL-6 production by about 65% to 70% over the 24 hours following either session, while IL-6 increases in high-hostile individuals jumped from 45% after the social session to 113% after the conflict session.
"Frequent or persistent stress-related changes in plasma levels of these key cytokines have broad implications for health," the researchers argue, noting that elevated levels of proinflammatory cytokines are linked to a range of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, and type II diabetes.
The fact that even a short dispute in a laboratory setting can spark such changes in wound healing suggests that it is a "really sensitive process," Dr. Kiecolt-Glaser said.
Primary source: Archives of General Psychiatry
Source reference: Kiecolt-Glaser JK et al. Hostile Marital Interactions, Proinflammatory
Cytokine Production, and Wound Healing. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62:1377-1384.
PStudy: Ill spouse can hasten death
Janet Kornblum
USA Today
February 16, 2006
Dementia, hip fracture put most strain on well partner
"The realization that the health of people is interconnected could change how we view the proper delivery of health care."
Sometimes, spouses who regularly depend on each other to compensate for weaknesses, such as poor hearing, eyesight or memory, have trouble coping with daily activities when their spouses fall ill or die.
Or, put another way:
I got gaps; you got gaps; we fill each other's gaps.
Rocky
Older people whose sick spouses go to the hospital are much more likely to die than are spouses of healthy people, according to a groundbreaking study that could have broad implications for the nation's 44.4 million family caregivers.
The "widower effect" ‹ in which spouses die soon after being widowed ‹ has been common knowledge since it was first described in 1848. But the study of 518,240 older couples enrolled in Medicare shows for the first time that the illness of a spouse also can hasten death.
The nine-year study, the largest to quantify caregiver burden and the effect of losing a spouse, found that the period of greatest risk was within 30 days of a spouse entering the hospital or dying. The risk remains elevated for up to two years.
"You can die of a broken heart, not just when your partner dies, but also when your partner falls ill," says Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School, co-author of the study. It is published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study did not examine causes of death, but Christakis attributes the increased risk to factors such as stress and a partner being deprived of the spouse's social, emotional and financial support. Some might turn to alcohol when their partners fall ill, he says.
Sometimes, spouses who regularly depend on each other to compensate for weaknesses, such as poor hearing, eyesight or memory, have trouble coping with daily activities when their spouses fall ill or die.
Problems that affect physical or mental ability, like dementia or a hip fracture, are worse for a partner's health, the study found. Diseases such as leukemia or colon cancer showed no increased risk.
Though the researchers studied heterosexual married couples over 65, the findings could apply to almost anyone in a close relationship, Christakis says. "The realization that the health of people is interconnected could change how we view the proper delivery of health care."
Doctors should pay as much attention to the well spouse as they do to the sick one, says Suzanne Salamon, associate chief for clinical geriatrics at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She recommends that doctors talk to patients and their spouses separately.
More than 44 million Americans provide essential care for a family member, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving, a non-profit coalition of family groups. That number is expected to grow as the nation's 79 million baby boomers grow older.
Other studies have shown that long-term caregivers endure physical, emotional and financial strain.
"Family caregivers are at major risk for their own health and emotional well-being," says Lynn Friss Feinberg of the Family Caregiver Alliance, a national resource center for caregivers based in San Francisco.
She adds that caregivers also must bear the "enormous and devastating cost of care."
"Chronic illness affects entire families," not just the person who is ill, she says.
What Makes a Happy Marriage?
Andrew Herrmann
Chicago Sun Times
February 9, 2006
Other findings from the study included:
- People who grew up in two-parent households had higher levels of empathy.
"There's a lot more stress in single-parent households, and those parents may exhibit less empathy,'' Smith said.
The Beatles, who sang "the love you take is equal to the love you make,'' may have been on to something.
A new University of Chicago survey finds that those who have strong feelings of love for people in general are more likely to be rewarded with strong romantic relationships.
Additionally, those who had the highest levels of "altruistic love'' for their partners -- those who put their partners' well-being over their own -- were more likely to rate their lives as "very happy.''
"We usually think of these altruistic feelings as something that is done just for the good of it -- we don't look for positive results from them. Here is an indication that having these altruistic feelings may have a positive outcome,'' said Tom W. Smith, director of the National Opinion Research Center at the U. of C.
Married people who most strongly agreed with "altruistic love'' measurements such as "I would rather suffer myself than let the one I love suffer'' and "I would endure all things for the sake of the one I love'' were most likely to rank their marriages as "very happy.''
Nancy and Richard Brodner, who have been married for 15 years and work together, say the survey findings are "absolutely" true.
Gauging empathy
"That's what you want, to care about someone more than yourself," said Nancy.
Richard chimed in, "She's got to be No. 1."
How are they sure? Experience. Their marriage is Richard's third and Nancy's second."We're together 23-1/2 hours a day," Nancy said proudly. "That's what marriage is, it's not just about having kids. You get married to be together."
The survey data comes from two surveys of about 1,300 people each, conducted in 2002 and 2004. Researchers are interested in altruistic behavior because most sociological study revolves around decisions based on self-interest, Smith said.
Respondents were asked a series of questions to determine their levels of empathy and altruism. To gauge empathy, participants were probed about their feelings about the less fortunate, about those who are taken advantage of, and whether the respondents consider themselves "soft-hearted.''
The survey participants were also asked about their "altruistic behaviors'' ranging from counseling a depressed person to giving blood.
Not surprisingly, married people were more likely to put their partners' interests and well-being over their own when compared to dating singles or couples who lived together, Smith said. "They're less likely to express those kind of things because, on average, they are in a less committed, more short-term" relationship,'' he said.
We're getting more altruistic
Other findings from the study included:
- Women have a greater feeling of empathy than men.
- People who grew up in two-parent households had higher levels of empathy. "There's a lot more stress in single-parent households, and those parents may exhibit less empathy,'' Smith said.
- Those who pray daily are more likely to perform altruistic acts, such as doing charity work or lending money.
- Financial status had very little effect on levels of empathy or altruism. Smith suggested that the needy are more likely to value good-will gestures because they may have been on the receiving end.
- The U.S. is becoming more altruistic: Between 2002 and 2004, the number of people concerned about the less fortunate increased 5 percent to 75 percent. The number of respondents who said people should look out for themselves and not "overly worry'' about others fell 7 percent to 25 percent.
Contributing: Mark J. Konkol
--------------------------------
LOVE BY THE NUMBERS
- 120: Number of single white men in their 20s for every 100 twentysomething single women
- 153: Number of single Hispanic men in their 20s for every 100 twentysomething single women
- 92: Number of single black men in their 20s for every 100 twentysomething single women
- 6,000: Approximate number of marriages in the U.S. per day
- 82,076: Number of marriages in Illinois in 2003
- 34,553: Number of divorces in Illinois in 2003
- 4.7: Number, in millions, of opposite-sex couples cohabitating, or about 4.2 percent of all households
- 27.4: Median age of marriage for men
- 25.8: Median age of marriage for women
SOURCES: U.S. Census, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Happy Marriage Can Make you Look Younger
United Press International
January 30, 2006
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Jan 30, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Danish researchers say a happy marriage and plenty of money can take years off of a person's appearance.
The study, conducted by the University of Southern Demark, found that a married woman with a high social status, who has not spent a lot of time in the sun, could look at least seven years younger than a woman who is single, of a low social class and has spent excessive time soaking up harmful rays, the Daily Mail reported.
A happy marriage can make a woman look almost two years younger by the time she reaches middle age. Marital harmony can make men, in turn, look up to a year younger.
Heavy drinking was found to put a year on the faces of both sexes along with chronic asthma, diabetes and regularly taking painkillers.
Over-exposure to the sun was seen to add 1.3 years to a woman's perceived age while depression made women look 3.9 years older and men 2.4 years older.
Perhaps surprisingly, smoking 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years was found to add only a year of extra wrinkles to men and half that to women.
Divorce Makes People Miserable for Life
Amelia Hill
The Guardian UK - The Observer
January 8, 2006
People who divorce are permanently scarred by the experience and never regain their former levels of happiness, according to the largest and longest study ever made of the issue.
Over 30,000 people were studied for 18 years by Richard Lucas, from Michigan State University and the German Institute of Economic Research, who found that divorced people report a permanently lower enjoyment in life than married people.
'One of the most surprising findings in the study was that divorce was associated with permanent changes in levels of distress,' said Lucas.
Studies have consistently shown that marital status is associated with life satisfaction but the long term effects of divorce have never before been thoroughly investigated. Lucas's study found that happiness decreases for people in the years leading up to their divorce. Even among those who reported a rise in happiness after the divorce, their overall enjoyment in life never returned to previous levels.
In 2004, the number of divorces rose by 0.2 per cent to 167,116 - or 3,200 couples each week - the highest since 1996.
Another Argument for Marriage
Sue Shellenbarger
The Wall Street Journal
June 16, 2005
Work & Family: Another Argument for Marriage: How Divorce Can Put Your Health at Risk
When my creaky joints ache in the morning, I blame a lot of things -- too hard a workout at the gym, drizzly weather, advancing age.
It never occurred to me to blame my divorce -- until now.
The breakup of my marriage five years ago could actually be fueling my persistent aches, new research suggests. A study to be released next week at a national marriage conference shows that being divorced for long periods is linked to higher rates of chronic illness and loss of mobility later in life.
Coining a new term, "marital biography," to denote your entire lifelong experience with marriage, divorce and remarriage, the study's co-authors, University of Chicago's Linda Waite and Duke University's Mary Elizabeth Hughes, will show how that history has a cumulative effect on health. Indeed, your marital biography has an even bigger impact on long-term health than whether you are married or divorced at any particular time.
The longer you spend in a divorced or widowed state, the higher the likelihood of heart or lung disease, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and difficulties with mobility, such as walking or climbing stairs, according to the 2005 study of 8,652 people age 51 to 61. The research, funded by the National Institute on Aging, will be presented a week from today at a Dallas conference of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization.
People who were married at the time of the study and had never been divorced or widowed had 20% fewer chronic conditions, based on participants' reports of doctors' diagnoses, than individuals who had been divorced, after controlling for age, gender and race. That suggests the stresses of divorce and its aftermath have health effects that may not show up in a person until years later.
"Our marital biography writes on us and scars us," Diane Sollee, coalition director and founder of SmartMarriages.com, a marriage-education Web site, says of the study results. "It's a slow burn."
The researchers measured marital disruptions by calculating the percentage of the years since first marriage that were spent in a divorced or widowed state. In my case, I married once, in 1979, and divorced in 2000. Thus I've spent 20% of the time since I was first married in a state of marital disruption. That increases by 6% the number of chronic health problems I might expect to develop, compared with my risk if I'd never divorced.
If you're going to remarry, the study suggests, make sure you get it right. People in low-quality remarriages, as gauged by how much participants say they enjoy time with their spouses, are no better off than people who remain divorced, researchers found. A happy second marriage, however, offers significantly more health protection. If I'd remarried happily within two years of my divorce, my risk of chronic health problems would have risen only 2%.
Other studies have found a link between marriage, longevity and self-reported health. But that research has been based mostly on a "snapshot" of subjects' marital state, without a marital history or data about medical diagnoses.
Many studies have found links between long-term stress and a weakening of the immune system. Also, the stresses of divorce tend to trigger the kinds of behavior and conditions associated with chronic disease. A study of 127,545 adults last year by the National Center for Health Statistics showed divorced people reported more smoking, physical inactivity and heavy drinking than married individuals.
Obesity was the only exception, appearing more often in marrieds than singles. (Married guys in particular tend to be overweight.) Married adults also were less likely than widowed or divorced people to report they were in fair or poor health.
Parenting post-divorce poses unique strain. John Ramirez of Oxnard, Calif., formerly a city code-enforcement officer, worked six to seven days a week after his divorce so he could avoid being on call during the alternate weekends he cared for his then-school-age daughter.
Mr. Ramirez felt "keyed up," he says, and went to his doctor for help coping. "My immune system was being pummeled by the worry and lack of sleep."
The daunting workload shouldered by single heads-of-household may also play a role. In addition to working and caring for her children, 12 and 16, after a divorce, Debra Markowitz had to learn how to run the lawnmower, de-bug home computers and chop firewood.
"Everything was up to me," says the director of a New York nonprofit organization. Too stressed to sleep, "I walked around with my heart palpitating," a worsening symptom of a heart-valve problem diagnosed before her divorce. Although she almost never gets colds, she had two bad ones after her marital breakup.
A Somis, Calif., pilot developed gastritis during a divorce that left him "crushed and reeling for years," he says. He sought help from his doctor and takes medication to prevent a recurrence. The stress of divorce, he believes, reduced his immunity.
Researchers haven't been able to control the study results completely for the impact of marital selection -- that is, the likelihood that people who are healthier and more robust in the first place will be more likely to form lasting, happy marriages. Researchers explored effects of marital selection and found mixed results, says Dr. Waite.
While more research is needed, she says, it seems clear that married people's healthier state springs from both -- not only selection, but from the protective, stabilizing effect of marriage.
The Marriage Benefit:
A number of studies have found that, compared with divorced people, happily married people tend to:
- Have fewer chronic health problems
- Report fewer symptoms of depression
- Smoke and drink less
- Say they are in better health
- Retain greater mobility in middle age
A Happy Heart Seems to Do a Body Good
Marilyn Elias
USA Today
March 9, 2005
VANCOUVER, B.C. - Good relationships and a sense of purpose may help women over age 60 fend off heart disease, arthritis and other illnesses by reducing the inflammation that promotes them, a new study says.
On the other hand, poor mental health such as depression, anxiety and hostility can increase the harmful inflammation, another study suggests. Both reports were released last week at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting here.
In the first study, the more positively women rated their relationships, the lower their levels of interleukin-6, a protein that is created by inflammation and also causes inflammation, says psychologist Elliot Friedman of the University of Wisconsin. And the more sense of purpose women feel, the fewer receptors their blood has for the damaging protein, he says.
Friedman studied 135 women ages 61 to 91 in relatively good health. After taking into account factors such as illness, medications and weight that could affect interleukin, he still found a strong link between a positive sense of well-being and lower levels of the harmful protein.
As adults age, their interleukin-6 rises, so if there's something we can do to bring it down, that's important to know, he says. Happier women have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and that could be tied to less of the protein.
Also, good relationships could improve sleep, and good sleep has been linked to less interleukin-6.
Both explanations are plausible, says Gregory Miller, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who has studied depression and interleukin. If what he's suggesting is true, it would have hugely important implications for health, Miller says.
But he says at least some of the inflammation could be a result of diseases that are common in older adults but haven't surfaced yet and so might be missed in studies. For example, heart attacks and strokes happen suddenly but can take years to develop. You might look healthy, but your arteries are smoldering, and there's less blood going to the brain, which could affect your well-being, Miller says.
So happier, more purposeful people could be benefiting from less disease-caused inflammation rather than their well-being itself reducing the dangerous molecules. It's a chicken-or-egg question that can be answered only by longer-term studies, Miller says.
On the negative side of mental health, a study tracking 331 healthy adults over three years found that initial high levels of depression, anxiety and hostility led to more interleukin-6 in three years. The more depressed, anxious and hostile a person was at the outset, the more the protein increased, says Jesse Stewart, a University of Utah psychologist.
Upset adults might produce more of the stress hormone cortisol. In the short term, cortisol lowers inflammation, but there's some evidence that chronically high levels make receptors for it less sensitive over time. Then they no longer take in the cortisol, so inflammation can run rampant.
Says Stewart: We're starting to understand how depression might get inside the body to influence cardiac health, and one way is promoting inflammation that causes heart attacks.
Study: A Happy Marriage Can Help Mend Physical Wounds
Marilyn Elias
USA Today
March 7, 2005
VANCOUVER, B.C. - A happy marriage apparently is good medicine, but hostile spouses may be harmful to one another's health.
Couples in conflict-ridden marriages take longer than the happily married to heal from all kinds of wounds, from minor scrapes or athletic injuries to major surgery, suggests a study out over the weekend.
And the health toll taken by a stressful job seems to be eased when the worker has a pleasurable home life.
This new research, reported at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting here, adds to growing evidence that marriage has an impact on health.
In the wound healing study, 42 couples agreed to let researchers use a suction device to create several minor blister wounds on their skin in two sessions about two months apart. The first time, couples were told to discuss a neutral topic; the next time they were given half an hour to resolve an issue or two on which they disagreed. Their discussions were monitored.
Researchers also checked participants' wounds over the next few weeks and their production of three proteins created in wound healing.
The outcome: "Even a simple discussion of a disagreement slows wound healing," says psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, who did the study with co-author Ronald Glaser of Ohio State University College of Medicine.
Overall, couples took longer to heal when asked to thrash out points of conflict than neutral issues. Hostile couples - peppering both discussions with criticism, sarcasm and put-downs - healed the slowest. It took them 40% longer, or two more days, to heal, and they also produced less of the proteins linked to healing.
These are minor wounds and brief, restrained encounters. Real-life marital conflict probably has a worse impact, Kiecolt-Glaser adds. "Such stress before surgery matters greatly," she says, and the effect could apply to healing from any injury.
In earlier studies done by Kiecolt-Glaser, hostile couples were most likely to show signs of poorer immune function after their discussions in the lab. Over the next few months, they also developed more respiratory infections than supportive spouses.
On the upside, good marriages may buffer couples against the stress of demanding jobs in which the worker has little control. In a study with 201 married adults, those in high-strain jobs had higher blood pressure at the start, says University of Toronto psychiatrist Brian Baker.
A year later, though, spouses in pleasurable marriages actually improved a couple of points in diastolic (bottom) blood pressure readings, despite their rough jobs. Meanwhile, those who seldom enjoyed talking or activities with their spouses had about a 3-point rise in blood pressure after coping with stressful jobs for a year.
"You may not be able to get away from the job stress," says Baker, "but a good marriage soothes people, minimizing bad effects from the job."
This doesn't surprise Karen Kayser, a Boston College social-work professor and author of When Love Dies, a book about couples falling out of love.
"People tend not to recognize how much their marriage can affect the rest of their life," she says. Kayser has studied how couples cope with the stress of a wife's diagnosis of breast cancer. "How the marriage helps or hurts tends to come out more during a crisis," she says, "but our marriages are affecting our health and well-being all the time."
Happy Marriage May Counter Work Stress
Judy Monchuk, CP
The London Free Press
October 26, 2004
CALGARY-Having a happy marriage may help workers cope with pressure-cooker stress at the office, a new study suggests. "People who have stress and strain at work are at higher risk of high blood pressure, and if they have supportive relationships at home, that modifies the effect," said Dr. Sheldon Tobe of Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre.
"But if they have a stressful relationship at home, it will actually make their blood pressure worse," said Tobe, a Heart and Stroke Foundation researcher.
The study found couples who were the most supportive and enjoyed each other's company had the lowest blood pressure. High blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack, stroke or kidney disease.
The findings, which applied to both men and women, are to be released today at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Calgary.
Tobe's research looked at 248 full-time Toronto hospital workers, all married or with partners, aged between 40 and 65. The 135 women and 113 men, all considered highly paid and highly educated, wore blood pressure monitors for 24 hours and filled out questionnaires evaluating job stress and marital harmony.
"Our research is telling us that people who have high job stress should seek more support at home to balance out their life," said Tobe. "And perhaps people who have stressful relationships at home should seek a work life that is more supportive and less stressful to balance their life as well."
The study did not examine if children had any impact on stress and blood pressure. More than one in five adult Canadians have high blood pressure. Half of Canadians have developed high blood pressure by age 65.
More research being presented today found that a strong relationship among co-workers can help reduce stress. "Job strain is a combination of high levels of psychological demand at a rapid pace coupled with low decision latitude, a feeling of having no control, no empowerment, no opportunity to use one's skills," said Dr. Alain Milot of Laval University, who will present results from the seven-year study.
The research found that over time, people with low co-worker support were more likely to develop high blood pressure from their jobs.
"We have found that the social support of colleagues or supervisors can significantly modify this," said Milot, whose team initially assessed 7,485 white-collar workers in Quebec City and followed up with 6,200.
Tobe says while the results seem to be common sense, the studies hold a strong message for employers. "Most employers are happy that they're putting high job demands on employees to be as efficient and productive as possible," he said.
"But where people don't have the ability to make decisions on their own, for example, an air traffic controller who has to put up his hand to go to the bathroom, employers can help," he said.
Copyright (c) The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003
Divorce Increases Crash Risk
Emmanuel Lagarde
The Australian
October 21, 2004
Being freshly divorced or newly separated boosts the risk of a road accident by 400 per cent, according to a French study published in the specialist journal Epidemiology. Three percent of all road accidents in France occur among people who have just broken up with their partners, amounting to an annual tally of 170 dead and 3000 injured, it said. The heightened risk is attributed to two likely factors-emotional stress and the use of antidepressants. The research is based on questionnaires returned by 20,000 employees of the state electricity and gas firm, EDF and GDF. The study was coordinated by Emmanuel Lagarde of the National Institute for Medical Research, or Inserm.
Over Time, Bickering Spouses Take a Toll on Well-Being
Study finds partner's hostility leads to chronic health problems
Marilyn Elias
USA Today
August 2, 2004
Honolulu - A critical, argumentative spouse can inflict major health damage on aging adults, a study released Sunday suggests.
Most marriage research has focused on couples younger than 50. But longer life spans and the boomer bulge headed toward 60 are sparking new interest in how marriage affects health in later years, says psychologist Jamila Bookwala of Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. She reported at the American Psychological Association meeting here.
Using a nationally representative database survey, she explored the link between health and marriage quality in 729 adults ages 50 to 74. All were in first marriages for an average of 38 years.
Helpful, supportive spouses didn't significantly improve adults' health. Especially in long marriages, "if your spouse is there for you all the time, you may come to take it for granted, to expect it, and after a while it doesn't do much to enhance your health," Bookwala says.
But older adults who said they had hostile, demanding spouses were in significantly worse shape for it. The more miserable the marriage, the more chronic and serious health problems they had ---- high blood pressure, arthritis ---- and the more painful physical symptoms and disability they reported.
After Bookwala took account of depression, which often goes along with illness, the tie to poor marriages remained. So bad health couldn't be chalked up to depression in married people with unkind spouses.
Of course, marriage to an ill partner could make a spouse cranky and mean. But past studies show marriage quality remains stable, even when partners are under the extreme stress of acting as caregivers for their mates, Bookwala says.
"Irrespective of the spouse's health, people tend to report the same feelings about their marriage," she says. So she believes the nasty treatment impairs health rather than poor health creating irritated spouses.
Studies with younger couples have found that snide put-downs and hostility from a spouse can weaken the immune system, leading to more colds and flu.
Women with unfaithful husbands often endure frequent criticism, says Debbie Then, a Palo Alto, Calif., psychologist and author of Women Who Stay With Men Who Stray. "It's a pattern," she says. "It's as though the men have to justify affairs, so there's this barrage of put-downs."
Even for such women who consider their marriages happy, "it does end up eating away at their health," Then says. "I saw lots of headaches and stomachaches and alcohol problems in these women."
Marital status matters in pregnancy outcome
Amy Norton
(Reuters Health)
June 15th, 2004
NEW YORK - Unmarried couples who live together may have a higher rate of pregnancy complications compared with those who are legally wed, according to a Canadian study.
Looking at more than 720,000 births in Quebec between 1990 and 1997, researchers found that so-called common-law couples had "modestly higher" risks of premature delivery, low birth weight and infant death compared with married couples.
The reason for the disparity is unclear, but its persistence throughout the 1990s is surprising, study co-author Dr. Michael S. Kramer of McGill University in Montreal told Reuters Health.
That's because the province of Quebec, which grants common-law couples many of the same rights that legally married couples have, has seen an explosion in such unions in recent years. In 1998, births to common-law mothers surpassed those to married women living in the province, Kramer and his colleagues note in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
According to the authors, Quebec defines a common-law union as one between two adults who publicly consent to live together and "respect the resulting rights and obligations."
Given the frequency of these relationships and their growing social acceptance, it's surprising that these couples consistently showed worse pregnancy outcomes over time, according to Kramer.
It's possible, he noted, that in some cases cohabitation is a sign of a less stable relationship, and that this could affect the pregnancy. However, Kramer said, more research is needed to figure out the reason for the disparity between married and unmarried couples.
During the study period, the proportion of births to common-law couples shot up from 20 percent in 1990 to 44 percent in 1997. Overall, 53 percent of births during this time were to legally married women, 35 percent to women in common-law unions, and the rest to single mothers.
While pregnancy outcomes were somewhat poorer for common-law couples than for married ones, they were "much better" than those of single women, Kramer and his colleagues report.
Compared with legally married couples, cohabiting ones were 14 percent more likely to have a premature baby and 21 percent more likely to have a low-birth-weight infant. And while infant deaths were rare in general, common-law couples were 23 percent more likely than married ones to have a baby die in the first year of life.
The disparities persisted when the researchers accounted for factors such as the mother's age and education, and whether she'd given birth before.
However, the findings do not necessarily point to a "therapeutic" effect of legal marriage, Kramer and his colleagues write. Women in common-law unions, they speculate, may face greater stress during pregnancy due to the relative lack of stability in their relationship-or they may differ from women who opt to walk down the aisle in some other way that affects their pregnancy.
Source: Obstetrics & Gynecology, June 2004.
Marriage Taken to Heart
Marilyn Elias
USA Today
March 4, 2004
Study suggests a troubled union can be unhealthier than none at all.
A happy marriage helps middle-age professional women avoid heart disease and strokes, but staying in the frying pan of single life is better for a woman's health than landing in the fire of a troubled union, a 12-year study suggests today.
Marital status and the quality of marriage both matter as women move into their postmenopausal years when the risk of cardiovascular disease grows, says researcher Wendy Troxel of the University of Pittsburgh.
She and psychologist Karen Matthews, who will speak at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Orlando, have followed 422 premenopausal women into their 50s to see how their marital states before menopause predict later health effects.
Study participants were upper-middle class. Compared with single women or those who were happily married in their 40s, the unhappily married or divorced were more than twice as likely to be at risk for heart attacks and strokes after menopause. There were too few widows to draw any conclusions about their risk, Troxel says.
The higher risk for unhappily wed and divorced women was significant even after accounting for age and health. The symptoms researchers checked for are lumped under the umbrella of "the metabolic syndrome," and there's increasing evidence that they put adults at high risk for heart disease and strokes. Blood pressure, blood fats, glucose and tummy fat are considered in diagnosing the syndrome.
Depending on the study, marriage has been found to benefit and to impede women's health, but the research tended to lump all married women together, Troxel says.
Newer studies are separating happy and unhappy wives and are concluding that a good marriage is therapeutic, but a bad one may be worse than none at all.
Women in miserable marriages are stressed. Stress can drive up blood pressure and trigger stress hormone surges that make it harder to process insulin, putting women at risk for diabetes, which in turn is a risk factor for heart disease. There's also evidence that women in happier marriages take better care of themselves.
Among the upscale women she studied, "the single ones often choose to be single. They may have good social networks and great jobs-all in all, less stress than women in bad marriages." Low-income singles may not be as healthy, she says.
Cardiovascular disease takes time to develop, so the higher risk among divorced women may reflect cumulative stress, Troxel says. Some were in bad marriages for a long time, and others might suffer continuing divorce-linked stress.
Unhappy spouses often have sleep disturbances that can raise blood pressure, says University of Utah psychologist Timothy Smith. "Marriage has such a strong effect because your spouse is inescapable. You can get away from your boss, but you can't get away from your spouse, even at night."
That can be great-or terrible. "There are different ways to be married, and different ways to be unmarried," Smith says. "You have to look at quality of life and the quality of relationships."
Cohabiting Boosts Men's Mental Health
NewScientist.com News Service
December 22, 2003
Cohabiting is better for men's mental health, but marriage is better for women's happiness, suggests a new study.
The study of nearly 4,500 men and women in the UK also reveals that men and women who stick with their first enduring relationship enjoy good mental health.
However, where men recover from serial break-ups, women fare much worse. In fact it may be much better for a woman's mental health to stay single than to have loved and lost, suggests the study by Michaela Benzeval at Queen Mary, University of London and colleagues.
"The lack of protection of the financial and property rights, and hence the security of cohabiting couples when they separate may explain why women who cohabit have poorer mental health than women who marry," says the team.
"For women, security is more important," say Paula Hall, a relationship counsellor at Relate. "They are the ones who have babies and they have very strong nurturing and protective instincts. That may be one reason why marriage is more important to them.
"For men, security is less of an issue. Feeling trapped is a bigger problem for them. That may be way they fare better if they cohabit rather than marry," she told the BBC.
Depression and anxiety
Marriage has long been associated with good health benefits - particularly for men. Previous studies have shown people who wed have longer life expectancy, lower death rates and better psychological wellbeing than those who remain unmarried, says the team.
Benzeval and colleagues examined data from a major survey - the British Household Panael Survey - covering 10,000 adults from 1991 to 2000.
The men and women under 65 who were included in Benzeval's analysis were interviewed and given a standard questionnaire to assess psychological distress, including depression and anxiety.
"Enduring first partnerships were associated with good mental health," say the researchers.
The break-up of partnerships was linked to poor mental health in both sexes, although forming new relationships partially reversed this. However, women took longer to recover than men.
What the Data Show About Marriages and Families
Zenit News Agency
September 20, 2003
Range of Evidence Lends Credence to Backers of Traditional Lifestyles
NEW YORK, SEPT. 20, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Supporters of traditional marriage might find comfort in new data that underline the importance of the family and religious values. A lengthy article in the June issue of Population and Development Review gave an overview of the research literature on these themes. The magazine is published by the New York-based Population Council, not normally noted for its support of traditional moral values.
The article, by Linda Waite and Evelyn Lehrer, unambiguously states: "We argue that both marriage and religiosity generally have far-reaching, positive effects." Among their main points, which they back up with five pages of bibliographical references, are these:
| * | Married people are less likely than unmarried people to suffer from long-term illness or disability, and they have better survival rates for some illnesses. A growing body of research also shows an association between religious involvement and improved physical health. |
| * | Getting married, and staying married to the same person, is associated with better mental health. Marriage is also associated with greater overall happiness. While the connection between mental health and religion is much debated, Waite and Lehrer state that studies are suggestive of a positive association between the two. |
| * | A large body of literature documents that married men earn higher wages than their single counterparts. Although the relationship between religion and earnings is largely un-researched the article does note that religiosity has a positive effect on educational attainment, a key determinant of success in the labor market. |
| * | Children raised by their own married parents do better, on average, across a range of outcomes: infant mortality; health; schooling; and avoiding having children as unmarried teen-agers. Studies also document that parenting styles formed by religious affiliation are better for children's welfare. And kids who are religiously active themselves seem to do better at school and manage to avoid dangerous behavior. |
| * | Emotional and physical satisfaction with sex are higher for married people. |
| * | Married couples have notably lower levels of domestic violence. |
Trying to explain the causal factors behind these results, Waite and Lehrer observe that both marriage and religion lead to positive outcomes by providing social support and integration. They also encourage healthy behaviors and lifestyles. Notably, the benefits from marriage apply to those who make a lifetime commitment. Both divorce and cohabitation significantly reduce the positive effects.
A payoff
A recent study by the Heritage Foundation put a figure on just how much marriage is worth in economic terms. Single mothers who married would see an increase of $10,199 to $11,599 in their median family incomes, said Heritage Foundation analyst Patrick Fagan. He wrote a report on the subject with other Heritage researchers. The Washington Times reported on the study May 28.
The Heritage researchers said that new light has been shed on the topic by the ongoing Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. That five-year study, conducted by researchers with Princeton and Columbia universities, involves some 4,700 new parents who are low-income and typically unmarried.
Marriage has a significant impact for single mothers who don't work, the study found. These welfare mothers who remain single will live in poverty because welfare benefits rarely, if ever, lift a family out of poverty. "By contrast, if the mother marries the child's father, the poverty rate drops dramatically to 35%," the researchers said.
And the psychological benefits of family life were highlighted in a study published last month in Denmark. Adults with children are less likely to commit suicide than those without, the Associated Press said in its Aug. 11 report on the study. Likewise, young children were found to add an extra layer guarding against suicide for women. The study involved 18,611 people in Denmark who committed suicide from 1981 to 1997.
"It is widely expected that childbearing is most often a positive life event that may prevent people from ending their life," Drs. Ping Qin and Preben Bo Mortensen of Aarhus University in Denmark said in the study.
The researchers compared data on suicide victims and a control group. Nearly 47% of suicide victims had no children, and fewer than 23% had two or more children. Only 2% of suicide victims had a child younger than age 2.
The results confirm some previous data but also "fly in the face" of some assumptions about the impact of having children, said psychologist David Clark of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago.
For example, given the prevalence of postpartum depression, which experts think occurs in at least 10% of pregnancies, it might be assumed that suicide would be more common among parents and especially mothers, Dr. Clark said. Also, "people think having a lot of kids is economically stressful" and could lead to mental distress or even suicidal thoughts, he said. On the contrary, the study illustrated the strength of the biological and psychological bonds that occur between parent and child.
Room to improve
Census data from the United States and England show that much remains to be done to improve family life. The Washington Times on June 17 highlighted some of the findings contained in the U.S. Census Bureau's report, "Children's Living Arrangements and Characteristics: March 2002."
The bureau found that in 2002 around 69%, or 49.7 million, of the nation's 72.3 million children (younger than 18) lived with two parents. That percentage has remained essentially unchanged since the early 1990s. But 19.8 million children are living with single parents. Of these, 83%, or 16.5 million, lived with their mothers.
Data from the 2000 U.S. census showed the number of unmarried couples had surged in the previous decade, to 5.5 million from 3.2 million, the New York Times reported March 13. "There is a very significant increase in the number of unmarried-couple households," said Martin O'Connell, chief of the branch on fertility and family statistics at the Census Bureau.
In the United Kingdom, the number of households headed by married couples has fallen below 50% for the first time, the Times of London reported Feb. 14. Data from the 2001 census covering England and Wales revealed that the proportion of married households plummeted from 55% to 45% between 1991 and 2001. The proportion in 1981 was 64%. In 1971 it was 68%.
At the same time there has been a steady increase in the number of never-married, single people living on their own, cohabiting couples and lone parents. Some 22% of children under age 16 now live in lone-parent families, with another 11% living with cohabiting couples.
More recently, London's Sunday Times reported Sept. 7 on a study showing that single mothers are more prevalent in countries where the state provides plenty of benefits. "Increases in public support for single mothers are significantly associated with a higher prevalence of never-married and divorced mothers," said the author of the study, Libertad Gonzalez of Northwestern University in Illinois.
Gonzalez analyzed the levels of single motherhood in 17 Western countries and compared them with the levels of state benefits. Raising benefits likely lead to more single mothers, she found.
Meanwhile, efforts continue in many countries to undermine marriage and the family. In Chile, the Parliament is considering legislation that could introduce divorce for the first time in that country. Canada is pursuing legislation to recognize same-sex unions as a form of marriage. And in the United States, proponents of same-sex unions are awaiting the outcome of a court case on the issue in Massachusetts. Another case is under way in New Jersey.
If courts and legislatures have doubts about upholding traditional marriage, they might do well to look at what medical and census data are showing.