The One Reason You Should Get Married
Last week a video of a senior couple trying to figure out their new webcam—and getting a little frisky—quieted all the marriage haters out there. Seriously, try watching this clip and not believing in the power of lurv. (Yes, that was a Celine Dion reference. Deal with it.) And now, a new study out of the University of Rochester has further reaffirmed our belief in marriage and its benefits. According to researchers, getting hitched is good for your heart and being in an LTR can keep it ticking longer than if you were single.
There's a catch, though. It's not enough to just be married; you have to be happily married to reap the health benefits. (Well, at least women do. Men, on the other hand, live longer and have healthier hearts than their single counterparts even if they're in crappy relationships.) "While unhappy marriages provide virtually no survival bonus for women, satisfying unions increase a woman's survival rate almost fourfold," according to a release published on the University of Rochester site.
Related: A Wedding Planner Spills The Secrets Of What Makes A Marriage Last
The study looked at 225 married and unmarried subjects who had undergone coronary bypass surgery and discovered that the former group were three times more likely to be alive 15 years later. Of the happily married women, 83 percent were alive, compared to 28 percent of unhappily wedded women and 27 percent of singles.
Related: Add Oomph to Newlywed Nookie
One of the researchers even said that having a spouse is "every bit as important to survival after bypass surgery as more traditional risk factors like tobacco use, obesity, and high blood pressure". That said, walking down the aisle doesn't give you license to puff, overeat, and generally disregard your health. And on the other hand, single women shouldn't freak since things like quitting smoking, eating right, and watching your blood pressure can keep you super healthy, regardless of your relationships status.
Related: Confessions of a Bachelor Party Stripper
As for why being married is so good for your health, the researchers didn't offer much of an explanation. They did, however, point to an earlier study that found people with "lower hostility in their marriages have less of the kind of inflammation that is linked to heart disease".
Why do you think having a husband or wife can be so beneficial to one's health?
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