Marital ebbs, flows tied to changes in heart health

There are plenty of incentives to fix a marriage, general happiness chief among them. But now researchers are suggesting a less-obvious reason: it can improve heart health.

In a study of 620 married fathers in the United Kingdom, those who reported improving marital relationships over a six-year span decreased their body mass index by an average of 1.07 units—the equivalent of about 10 pounds. They also showed slightly lower LDL cholesterol levels and improvements in blood pressure readings.

The opposite effect occurred in men with worsening marriages, and those with consistently good or bad relationships showed little change in risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD).

“The similarity of CVD risk factors for men in persistently good and bad marriages suggests a number of possibilities; that quality of marital relationship is unimportant; that there could be some habituation after a period of time—so the emotional effects of marital quality are no longer salient; or reporting bias,” wrote lead author Ian Bennett-Britton, a research fellow at the University of Bristol, and colleagues. They published their findings in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

Bennett-Britton et al. noted their study cohort was still relatively young, so it’s unclear whether the patterns observed in the study would ultimately result in correlating amounts of CVD onset.