Well-educated wife is good for the heart

MARRYING a well-educated woman is good for a man’s heart, researchers have found.

It’s not the knowledge of ancient Greek texts or a grasp of quantum physics that warms men’s cockles, rather that a woman’s health-promoting habits often extend to her partner.

Norwegian researchers studied 20,000 married men over a 15-year period and concluded that those wed to worldlier women had a lower risk of heart disease.

The research team, who studied men aged between 35 and 56, suggest well-educated women may have a calming effect on their husbands, and may have a positive influence on dietary and lifestyle habits.

They found the better educated the wife, the less likely their husbands were to be overweight couch potatoes or smokers. They also suffer less from high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Of the men taking part, just over 6,000 were better educated than their wives, while 5,000 were less well-educated. The rest had similar levels of education.

The researchers’ conclusions contradict earlier research which found high levels of heart disease among men married to highly-educated women.

But the Norwegians claim their study shows men, educated to the age of 18 or above, who married women of the same educational level are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease than those married to a woman with a lower level of education. But less well-educated men married to more educated women saw no benefits.

One of the researchers, Dr Haakon Meyer of the Institute of Nutrition Research at the University of Oslo, said the paper suggested educated men married to educated women do better: “Maybe because women make decisions on food and lifestyle,” he said.