Marriage Leads to Longer Life: Toronto Researchers
A happy union could lead to a longer life, while an unhappy marriage can kill partners with high blood pressure, according to a study released Monday by Toronto researchers.
The study, the first to look at the long-term impact of marriage, finds that people with hypertension, but in good marriages, benefit from doing things with their partners and have their blood pressure down.
To the contrary, those with hypertension in bad marriages are found to have thicker heart walls, a sign that their hypertension have worsened. Even the mere presence of their spouses could aggravate their blood pressure, the study says.
"In that case, it was better to avoid your spouse if you had a bad
marriage," said lead author Dr. Brian Baker, a psychiatrist at the Toronto Western Hospital. "If you had a good marriage, it was best to be with them. Your blood pressure was sustained lower than if you were not with your spouse," he said.
Baker and his team have studied 103 people since the early 1990s. Participants, who were also asked to assess the quality of their marriage, wore monitors that checked their blood pressure every 15 minutes through the day and hourly overnight and had echocardiograms to measure the size of their hearts.
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