Study ties marital strife, heart disease

October 8, 2007 09:28:04 PM PST

A lousy marriage might literally make you sick. Marital strife and other bad personal relationships can raise your risk for heart disease, researchers reported Monday.

What it likely boils down to is stress — a well-known contributor to health problems, as well as a potential byproduct of troubled relationships, the scientists said.

In a study of 9,011 British civil servants, most of them married, those with the worst close relationships were 34 percent more likely to have heart attacks or other heart trouble during 12 years of follow-up than those with good relationships. That included partners, close relatives and friends.

The study, in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, follows previous research that has linked health problems with being single and having few close relationships. In the new study, researchers focused more on the quality of marriage and other important relationships.

"What we add here is that, 'OK, being married is in general good, but be careful about the kind of person you have married.' The quality of the relationship matters," said lead author Roberto De Vogli, a researcher with University College in London.

De Vogli said his research team is doing tests to see if study participants with bad relationships have any biological evidence of stress that could contribute to heart disease. That includes inflammation and elevated levels of stress hormones.

Another recent study also looked at quality of relationships but had different results. There was no association between marital woes in general and risks for heart disease or early death. But it did find, over a 10-year follow-up, that women who keep silent during marital arguments had an increased risk of dying compared with wives who expressed their feelings during fights. What appeared to matter more for men was just being married; married men were less likely to die during the follow-up than single men.

That study, of nearly 4,000 men and women, was published online in July in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

In De Vogli's study, men and women with bad relationships faced equal risks. Volunteers filled out questionnaires asking them to rate the person to whom they felt closest on several measures. These included questions about to what extent does that person "give you worries, problems and stress?"

They also were asked about whether they felt they could confide in that person, or whether talking with that person made them feel worse.

Over the following 12 years, 589 participants had heart attacks or other heart problems. Those with the highest negative scores on the questionnaire had the highest risks, even taking into account other factors related to heart disease such as obesity, high blood pressure and smoking.

James Coyne, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor who also has examined the health impact of social relationships, said De Vogli's results "make intuitive sense." But he said the study found only a weak association that doesn't prove bad relationships can cause heart disease.

"It is still not clear what to recommend," Coyne said.

"Do we tell people who have negative relationships to get therapy? They may have other reasons to do so, but I see no basis for them doing so only to avoid a heart attack," Coyne said.

Ending a bad marriage is not necessarily the answer either, he said, given evidence that being unmarried also could be a risk.

swell

Ok, they pulled info from "The Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine". Ummm....yeaaahh....

And one of the experts said the study "...made intuitive sense."

Duuuhh.... Bottom line: bad relationship make you sick. End of story. It has nothing to do with being married or not.

Whew!!!Had me worried for sec.!

the powers of the mind make you sicker......the thoughts you put in it......the negative.....the self affirmations.....the relationship with yourself...

Is that what Eric is doing now? Is he affirming himself with loving thoughts??

hahaha you better not tell eric!!!!

or maybe you should invite eric on here!!!!

heartsoul, I love ya girl...and wish we could get married...but then we'd both die of heart attacks

STRESS is bad for your health?

No sh!t Sherlock

Heart break really hurts:

"Confirming the wisdom of the poets and philosophers, doctors say the sudden death of a loved one really can cause a broken heart. In fact, they have dubbed the condition "broken heart syndrome.''

In a study published just in time for Valentine's Day, doctors reported how a tragic or shocking event can stun the heart and produce classic heart attack-like symptoms, including chest pain, shortness of breath and fluid in the lungs.

Unlike a heart attack, the condition is reversible. Patients often are hospitalized but typically recover within days after little more than bedrest and fluids, and suffer no permanent damage to their hearts.

In their study, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, doctors at Johns Hopkins University gave a name to the condition, demonstrated through sophisticated heart tests how it differs from a heart attack, and offered an explanation for what causes it."

http://www.livescience.com/health/ap_heartbreak_050209.html

There is more at the link, including many studies which show similar things to what heartandsoul reported....

Too bad they can't just tell you to leave an unhappy relationship and go find a healthier one... seems like a no brainer to me, to quote sage, "NSS"...

I agree Anoasis...my dad died of a broken heart, he realised his sweetheart, his best friend, the girl he fell in love with, of 48 years was going to die...

He just hadn't accepted it...until one day reality hit him so hard his otherwise healthy heart stopped.

Three weeks later his sister, his little sister who idolised him, gave up her fight with emphysema, the shock of losing her brother, created a marked and radical decline, in her well managed dis-ease...

Three months later my mother joined them, she didn't see the point..

my deeevorce hurt my pocketbook! most expensive two words that have ever come out of my mouth. "I DO".

I'm so sorry Jess... but I guess it was their "choice" in so far as they were able to choose...

I have seen it also, luckily I have also seen the decline followed by a renewed interest and recovery to the other joys available in life... may we all be able to recognize that one loss, no matter how devestating, is not a loss of everything...

Again, Anoasis, I agree, it is also how I veiw their choices...

and have seen the flipside in others, and experienced it also...