Happily Married Men and Women Have Lower Blood Pressure, Other Health Benefits

Happy people generally probably do

A report on research conducted at Brigham Young University reveals that men and women in happy marriages have substantially lower blood pressure than single individuals or couples in unhappy relationships.

Psychology professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad found that men and women in happy marriages scored four points lower than single adults during the course of a 24-hour blood pressure monitoring procedure. 204 married and 99 single adults were asked to wear unobtrusive portable blood pressure monitors which recorded blood pressure at random intervals throughout the day, even while participants slept. Each participant's blood pressure level was recorded about 72 times.

"There seem to be some unique health benefits from marriage," said Holt-Lunstad in a Science Daily report. "It's not just being married that benefits health - what's really the most protective of health is having a happy marriage." Not unexpectedly, the study found that unhappily married adults have higher blood pressure than both happily married and single adults.

LifeSiteNews.com has published many reports on the benefits to health and well-being of faithful marriage between one man and one woman, and the shortcomings of other types of relationships.

Dr. John Gottman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, who is well known for his research in the field of marriage, said, "The benefits (of faithful marriage) are better physical health, more resistance to infection, fewer infections, and a reduced likelihood of dying from cancer, from heart disease, from all major killers. The other health benefit is longevity: People live longer if they are in marital relationships, particularly if they are in good, satisfying relationships."

"There are physical benefits and mental health benefits," said Dr. Gottman. "You have less depression, less anxiety disorders, less psychosis, less posttraumatic stress disorders, fewer phobias. You also have fewer injuries due to accidents." He further states that "married men and women have lower suicide rates than unmarried ones because married people have meaningful social networks of friends and relatives. Meaningful relationships give people a sense of personal value and a feeling of responsibility to others." "Married individuals also tend to have stronger immune systems, making them less likely to catch colds and develop other illnesses than unmarried ones and that married persons are more likely to report feeling hopeful, happy, and good about themselves."

An interesting addendum to the research into the benefits of happily married couples is the statistics which show that perseverance in an unhappy marriage has a very decided benefit. The latest data show that within five years, just 12 percent of very unhappily married couples who stick it out are still unhappy; 70 percent of the formerly unhappiest couples now describe their marriage as "very" or "quite" happy.

Maggie Gallagher of the Manhattan Institute said, "Because marriage is a partnership in the whole of life, backed up by family, community, and religious values, marriage can do what economic partnerships don't: give a greater sense of meaning and purpose to life (a reason to exercise or cut back on booze, work harder, and to keep plugging even in the middle of those times when the marriage may not feel gratifying at all).

Married people are both responsible for and responsible to another human being, and both halves of that dynamic lead the married to live more responsible, fruitful, and satisfying lives. Marriage is a transformative act, changing the way two people look at each other, at the future, and at their roles in society. And it changes the way significant others - from family to congregation to insurance companies and the IRS - look at and treat that same couple. Sexual fidelity, an economic union, a parenting alliance, the promise of care that transcends day-to-day emotions: all these are what give a few words mumbled before a clergyman or judge the power to change lives."

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Smell compatibility

What makes us fall in love? Is it lust, mutual interests, shared life goals, or something much more intangible? Recent research suggests the latter. Researchers have only recently discovered an olfactory nerve that they believe is the route through which pheromones are processed. Nerve "O," as it is called, slipped under the radar for many years because it is so tiny. However, when the nerve was discovered in a whale, scientists surmised that this little nerve might be found in humans as well. And it was!

So what is the role of Nerve "O"? Nerve "O" has endings in the nasal cavity, but the fibers go directly to the sexual regions of the brain. Indeed, these endings entirely bypass the olfactory cortex! Hence we know the role of Nerve "O" is not to consciously smell, but to identify sexual cues from our potential partners.

What sexual cues do our scents give off? For one thing, we are more likely to be attracted to people whose scent is dissimilar to our own. Family members often share similar chemicals, so our attraction to differing chemical makeup suggests that sexual cues evolved to protect close family members from procreating together. On the other hand, pregnant women have been shown to be more drawn to people with similar chemical makeup, which might be due to the fact that during this crucial time, women are more apt to seek out family members than potential mates.

Research has also shown that these unconscious cues processed in Nerve "O" can make or break a relationship. Couples who have high levels of chemicals in common are more likely to encounter fertility issues, miscarriage and infidelity. The more dissimilar your and your partner's chemical makeup, the better chance you will have at successfully procreating and staying together.

So how can you create the scent that will keep you and your partner in the land of happily ever after? Unfortunately, you can't. Perfumes and colognes can't fool Nerve "O" - the scents that humans and animals are attracted to are intangible and instinctive. Even the most expensive designer perfume can't fool Mother Nature. When it comes to sexual attraction, it seems you really have to leave things in the air!

However, if you are taking a hormonal contraceptive, you might be bucking an evolutionary tide. Women who are on the pill are more likely to be attracted to men with similar chemical makeup - most likely because their bodies are fooling them into believing they are pregnant, and so much like actual pregnant women, their Nerve "O" leads them to kin and not mates. So if you were on the pill when you met your mate, you might experience a diminishing attraction when you cease taking it. Only time will tell what role Nerve "O" plays in future sex research, but one thing is for sure: When it comes to true love, follow your nose!

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

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