Marriage 'can damage women's health'
Women were warned today that being married can be bad for their health.
Scientists found that wives in strained marriages were prone to risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
However, the same was not true of their husbands, according to the research.
Psychologists in the US studied 276 couples aged 40 to 70 who had been married an average of 20 years.
Each couple filled out questionnaires designed to assess the good and bad aspects of married life.
Among the positive influences were mutual support, emotional warmth and friendliness – while negative effects included arguments, feelings of hostility, and disagreements over topics such as children, money and sex.
Participants were also given “depression scores” based on self-reported symptoms.
Couples were then examined in a clinic where doctors measured the size of their waists, took blood pressure readings, and tested levels of cholesterol and triglyceride blood fats and glucose.
The tests determined whether or not the volunteers had “metabolic syndrome” - a collection of symptoms known to increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
In women, marital strain was associated both with depression and a larger number of metabolic syndrome symptoms.
But although husbands in unhappy marriages were also depressed, they managed to avoid the adverse health effects suffered by their wives.
Researcher Ms Nancy Henry, from the University of Utah, said: “We hypothesised that negative aspects of marriages like arguing and being angry would be associated with higher levels of metabolic syndrome.
“We further anticipated that this relationship would be at least partly due to depressive symptoms.
“In other words, those who reported experiencing more conflict, hostility and disagreement with their spouses would be more depressed, which in turn would be associated with a higher risk of heart disease due to metabolic syndrome.
“We found this was true for wives in this study, but not for husbands. The gender difference is important because heart disease is the number-one killer of women as well as men, and we are still learning a lot about how relationship factors and emotional distress are related to heart disease.”
The findings were presented today at the American Psychosomatic Society’s annual meeting in Chicago.
Metabolic syndrome is characterised by five symptoms: high blood pressure, a bulging waistline, high blood sugar, high triglyceride levels, and low levels of “good” cholesterol.
Professor Tim Smith, who co-led the University of Utah team, said: “This study is a simple, preliminary test of what might be unhealthy about relationships for women.
“There is good evidence they should modify some of the things that affect metabolic syndrome – like diet and exercise – but it’s a little premature to say they would lower their risk of heart disease if they improved the tone and quality of their marriages – or dumped their husbands.
“The immediate implication is that if you are interested in your cardiovascular risk – and we all should be because it is the leading killer for both genders – we should be concerned about not just traditional risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol but the quality of our emotional and family lives.”
The study is part of a larger investigation looking at the health effects of marriage.
Other data from the larger study suggest that divorce is associated with heart disease.
