14 DAY TRIAL // Oxford University investigators have determined in a recent study that women who are married are up to 28 percent less likely to suffer fatal heart diseases than peers who have not yet tied the knot. The research paper also shows that getting married does not have any effect on preventing the development of heart diseases in women in the first place.
The science team, led by Oxford expert Sarah Floud, PhD, proposes that these trends exist because women who are married may be more motivated to seek medical treatment earlier on in case something is wrong with their health. Additionally, women in this group may be more likely to want to improve overall health, for their families and children.
The group is the first to admit that other explanations may be possible as well, since a clear causal link between these factors has not been established; this was not the purpose of the new investigation. It is also important to note here that a similar protective effect can be noticed in men, though not to the same extent as the one present in women.
These benefits may stem from the fact that partners and spouses encourage each other to take better care of themselves, to constantly improve their health, and to quit harmful lifestyle habits, such as drinking and smoking, PsychCentral reports. The data used in this research were collected from the Million Women Study, which is a major women's health investigation effort in the United Kingdom.
The Oxford group assessed the cases of nearly 730,000 women, with an average age of 60. All test participants were followed over a 9-year period, during which time around 30,000 subjects developed some type of heart disease. A total of 2,000 women died from these conditions, the team reports in the latest issue of the scientific journal BMC Medicine.
“Married women were no less likely to develop heart disease than women who were not married, but they were less likely to die from it. This means that, over 30 years, about three in 100 married women would die from heart disease compared with about four in 100 women who are not married or living with a partner,” Floud explains.
In order to get the most relevant results, scientists also took into account other factors that might have influenced the conclusions of the investigation, such as socioeconomic status, lifestyle elements, and age. The findings held true even for women who were widowed or divorced.