Lose Your Heart to Someone, Stay Heart-healthy

Stay Together Forever

The Older you Grow, the More you Yearn for a Better-half

Marriage has its perks and downsides. You get someone to spend quality time and share your feelings. At the same time an unhappy relationship can multiply stress levels, create ill-feelings and cause unhappiness. Marriage is not a cakewalk and many people genuinely try to make it work at any cost. An affectionate spouse not only adds peace, joy and happiness in the relationship but also promotes your well-being and the urge to take care of yourself.
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Vow to Stay Together Forever
A new study has found that marriage lowers the risk of heart disease. Published in the journal Heart, the new study report analyzed more than 30 studies involving over two million people probing on their marital status and heart disease risk. While 80% risk for the disease depended on genetic or lifestyle factors such as high blood glucose levels and diabetes another 20% risk for it was influenced by social factors and personal relationships. This doesn’t come as a surprise because there are other studies supporting the fact that emotional well-being affects heart health greatly and physicians must evaluate it to determine the risk of a heart problem in patients. Stress is a critical risk factor for heart health and its causes might be many-financial strains, health problems, death of a loved one or loneliness. Loneliness is often a problem in people who have lost their spouses or live alone either because they are divorced/separated or they have never been married. Emotional well-being is far more than having money to buy things or having a high-paid job. Stay free from stress and stay positive with the help of practical tips from the website www.firsteatright.com. You need people to share your feelings and love you, and marriage gives you that.

Results of the study showed that:
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• Compared to married people those who were unmarried, divorced or widowed were 42% likelier to develop cardiovascular disease and 16% likelier to develop coronary artery disease
• Unmarried people were 43% likelier to die from heart disease and 55% likelier to die from stroke
• Divorce increases the risk of death due to coronary disease by 33% and more than doubled the risk of death from strokes
• Divorced people were also 35% likelier to develop heart disease than married people
• Widows seemed to suffer from a 16% increase in risk of stroke compared to married individuals, but they did not suffer from an increased risk of heart disease
  
  

Though it is a large-scale study it lacks in certain areas. The study did not consider homosexual couples nor did it look into the quality of the relationship which plays a vital role in assessing the emotional well-being  (a factor that determines heart health immensely) of the individual.

Heart & Soul of Marriage
While it sounds goods when someone tells you that marriage improves heart health and cheers you on one of those gloomy days when you suffer from a strained relationship, we need to understand what factors stand behind such a proposition!

Maybe the spouses can judge any deterioration to their partner’s health, respond quickly in case of any emergency and ensure that their partners follow a heart-healthy routine. Both the husband and wife care for each other’s well-being and it is human nature to eat well and look after ourselves when there is someone dependent on us. Living alone negates any of these needs according to the individual and he/she takes least pain to eat healthy food or exercise regularly. The feeling of ‘For whom should I take care of myself?’ sinks within the individual which acts as the root cause for many problems. Also, when both husband and wife work their income increases by 2-fold and they are better equipped to afford for proper healthcare needs. But it is also possible that when marriage doesn’t work out between two people and they get divorced they experience stress that can worsen heart health and create other health problems. So, it is unlikely that we recommend people to get married to live heart-healthy but at the same time the advantages should also be considered. Physicians too should review marital status while considering likeliness of heart disease.

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