Explanations
Good marriages promote health and longevity, but stressful and shattered marriages have the opposite effect, especially for men. Why?
The explanations fall into three categories: biological, behavioral, and psychological.
The biological explanations center on stress. Martial conflicts produce elevated levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline, which raise blood pressure.
Marital stress also triggers the production of cytokines, small proteins that set the inflammatory cascade in motion.
Inflammation is a newly recognized cardiac risk factor, and divorced men have higher levels of inflammatory markers than married men.
The behavioral factors are no less important. Unmarried, divorced, and widowed men don’t eat as well as married men.
They are less likely to exercise but are more likely to smoke, drink excessively, and engage in other risky behaviors.
In contrast, married men are more likely to get regular medical care and to benefit from a higher standard of living.
But while senior citizens who live with a spouse get better preventive care than those who live alone, elders who live with an adult child do not get better care.
Loneliness, depression, and social isolation also contribute to the excess mortality associated with bereavement, divorce, or never having married.
A Harvard study reported that socially isolated men have an 82% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with men who have strong interpersonal relationships.
And the New England Research Institute reported that 66% of men rely on their wives for their primary social supports; only 21% rely on other people, and 10% have no such supports.
Clearly, subtracting a wife greatly increases a man’s risk of isolation.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/marriage-and-mens-health
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