A new research has found that happily married couples generally have lower blood pressure than those who are unhappily married or perhaps even single.
The research conducted by Brigham Young University suggests that a happy marriage is good for blood pressure in adults. It also says that being in a stressed marriage could even be worse than being single.
To be beneficial for blood pressure, marriage must be of a high quality. It thus goes without saying that one is definitely better off being single than being in an unhappy marriage.
The study for this research was led by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, an assistant psychology professor at Brigham Young University who specializes in relationships and health. The study included 204 married people who were married for an average of eight years and 99 single adults including men and women. A majority of the singles had never been married and none were loving with a partner.
The volunteers aged 20-68 years were made to wear portable blood pressure monitors for 24 hours. These devices recorded their blood pressure. Further, the married people were asked to fill out questionnaires about their marriage relating to marital satisfaction.
The researchers then analyzed the data and found that blood pressure among married people tended to be lower during sleep than in single people. Further, the unhappily married couples had got higher average blood pressure than both happily married and single adults.
“There seem to be some unique health benefits from marriage. It’s not just being married that benefits health, what’s really the most protective for health is having a happy marriage,†said Holt-Lunstad.
“Research has shown that people whose blood pressure remains high throughout the night are at much greater risk of cardiovascular problems than people whose blood pressure dips,†she added.
But it must be noted that other factors like diet, exercise, smoking and stress had also affected the volunteers’ blood pressure. The study concluded that these factors count for everyone whether they are single, married and whether they are happy or not.