Is Marriage Helping Or Hurting Your Heart Health?

By Linda Penkala, Author, LMT

Optimum Health For Life

. http://www.lindapenkala.com/

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Is Marriage Helping Or Hurting Your Heart Health?

Whether Post Heart Attack Or In a Stressful Marriage

Songs of love and marriage are plentiful, from The Power of Love by Huey Lewis to I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston. 

While research is bountiful on the healthy attributes of love and marriage, there exists the flip side to that CD! Here are some positive or stressful scenarios that marriage and the union of two lives play out over the years:

Positive Benefits of Marriage on Heart Heatlh:

• Quality matters within this bond, as happy marriages offer lower blood pressure than singles. Whereas those in strained marriages fared worse than single folks.
• Being in a committed, cohabitating relationship has been attributed to better health and heart disease prognosis.
• Holding hands and hugging can lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone according to recent studies.
• Marital trust and security, responding to a spouse’s needs is heart healthy if both are giving and receiving equally.

Effects of Martital Stress:

• Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health compared more than 1,500 adults in recovery one year after a heart attack, and the effects of marital strife were more apparent in women, 40% of whom reported feeling severely stressed over it, compared to 30% of men.
• High negativity in a marriage or close friendship, revealed that talking to a partner about a problem made things seem worse, and were 34% more likely to have a heart problem than those with less negativity and positive interactions.
• A four-year study of Acute Myocardial Infarction of married patients 18-55 revealed the detrimental impact of martial stress on their heart attack recovery.

Since heart attacks remain the leading cause of death in the U.S., with 605,000 new heart attacks and 200,000 recurrent ones annually, and a 119% increase in out of hospital cardiac arrests during the pandemic, (A.H.A) there is room for improvement. And especially in a stressful marriage, heart attack or not.

This is close to my heart as stress did negatively impact my heart by way of A Fib years ago, and wrote about wise lifestyle choices for women in my book, The Pause to Relax Ladies for Robust Heart Health. From the effects of dehydration to stress, it is sad and heart breaking that our public health agencies, fail to mention major lifestyle choices to reduce risks of heart attacks, strokes and CVD. My “9 Pillars of Heart Disease Prevention” within the book is a simple guide and holistic map created for you!