Relationship difficulties have a direct impact on cardiovascular health, according to a study that looks at people aged 60 and over.
The life of a couple has a direct influence on cardiovascular health. This observation, proven many times in the literature, has once again been confirmed in a study on subjects aged 60 or over, published in Tea Journals of Gerontology.
Researchers sought to assess the impact of a happy or, conversely, unhappy union on the blood pressure of each spouse. To do this, they brought together 1,356 married or cohabiting couples, born after 1953, whom they followed from 2006 to 2012. During this period, they questioned them on their perception of their marriage and collected biomedical data on their relationship. cardiovascular health.
Men, more sensitive to stress
Their observations suggest that marital difficulties directly influence health. Indeed, a poor marriage was associated with an indicator of high blood pressure, when both spouses admitted to being unhappy in love.
If this correlation is visible in both spouses, it also seems characterized by gender. Thus, according to the researchers, the blood pressure of men increased according to the level of stress experienced by their wives – while stressed men do not seem to have a direct impact on the blood pressure of women, which is more influenced by their perception of the couple.
Happier together
“We were particularly interested to find that husbands were more sensitive to the stress of their wives than the other way around, especially given all the previous work which had shown that wives were more affected by the marital bond”, explains the author. of this study, Kira S. Birdett.
The couple can therefore deteriorate health … or on the contrary preserve it. In March 2014, a study of a cohort of more than 3.5 million Americans showed that people who live in union are less prone to cardiovascular disease than single people.
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