Have you heard that marriage can positively impact heart health by reducing stress, providing emotional support, and encouraging healthier habits? Some studies have shown that married individuals tend to have lower rates of heart disease compared to their unmarried counterparts, possibly due to factors like improved access to healthcare and companionship. Let’s unpack these heart health factors.
1. Stress reduction
Being in a healthy, happy marriage can reduce stress. The burden to have, do, or be 100% of everything does not rest solely on your shoulders as a spouse. Even when it feels like you need to be a superhuman, stress is reduced by knowing that your spouse is available to pitch in and help out, carrying part of whatever burden is weighing you down, lifting it from your shoulders, or managing to take care of extra duties until you can resume your share of such domestic or financial responsibility. Sharing life’s journey as a married couple reduces stress by lightening the burden.
Before you reach out to buy a wedding gown or pressure your boo to put a ring on it, this holds true for happy and healthy marriages’ potential ability to have this effect on stress, not on marriage for marriage’s sake alone. Reducing stress can reduce the risk of heart disease. Although this study did not deal with marital bliss or the lack thereof, other studies that evaluated the marriage-heart health connection explained that the quality of the marriage was the key, not just the state of being married. Likewise, the Framingham study focused on married men compared to unmarried men. If the marriage is not a happy one, it can have the opposite effect and lead to increased blood pressure and other risks involving cardiovascular health, however.
2. Emotional support
With a shoulder to lean on and a listening ear, a good spouse can provide the emotional support that is necessary to have good health and happiness. With marriage, the nature of the relationship includes social support and companionship. This support system can lower stress not only emotionally, but also lower how frequently one feels lonely. Individuals in a married couple are more likely to feel as though they belong to a greater community beyond themselves.
More than just being legally bound to each other, the social contract that exists with marriage is respected by the surrounding community and blessed with a serious bond that starts with making vows before friends and family and is not easily broken. Additionally, marriage is not usually entered into lightly. All of this can lower blood pressure and lead to reduced stress.
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3. Encouraging healthier habits
A spouse may play a strong role in sharing and sticking to healthy habits. Spouses encourage their better halves to improve their diet, exercise, and stop smoking. These are the kinds of lifestyle changes that reduce the risk of heart disease.
4. Improved access to healthcare
Marriage could improve access to healthcare if one of the spouses has better insurance and more financial stability, for example. This can give the other a greater opportunity to get treated and have more access to preventive health steps or cardiovascular treatments.
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5. Companionship
Companionship is probably one of the most popular reasons to wed after one has reached a certain age, when many health challenges begin to become health problems, cardiovascular and otherwise.
Having a good spouse can make life sweeter. There is someone to come home to at the end of the day. There is someone to share the ups and downs with. There’s someone to break bread with. A good spouse can make you feel cared for. They can also listen to you. A good spouse can help you get to your medical appointments while providing moral support.
Lastly, a good spouse is committed to you and your health and has your back like no other. They vow to do so. By doing so, they live out their love commitment to their spouse and uphold the honor that they give to the marriage as part of a couple. A good marriage makes life richer and is life-giving, even if it has not yet been conclusively proven that a good marital relationship can help and heal the heart.
6. Accountability and moral support
One’s spouse is the first to notice a change in health. They are also able to hold the other spouse accountable. This means that with a married couple, each spouse is literally there in sickness and in health.
In the need for one to make a lifestyle change for better cardiovascular health, the other is there to hold their spouse accountable. One spouse could help the other maintain the lifestyle change and note the ups and downs that come with it. Part cheerleader and part caregiver, a married couple is invested in mind, body, and spirit in the continued health of one another.
They can be a mirror of the other’s choices and changes. They can examine with microscopic precision how successful or how tenacious their spouse is with necessary changes for better heart health, such as diet, exercise, medicine, and treatments. And lastly, a spouse can be the magnifying glass to enable the other to see with more clarity and understand with compassion the doctor’s orders after test results, and be counted on to be there every step of the way with recovery. They can help the other to comprehend ways to work to reverse small setbacks and transform them into big successes. A spouse can provide the required attention to help the other to remain with or restore heart health.
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7. Unmarried, no prospects, or not looking
If you’re not married, there are still things you could do for your heart to get the same results in the season of singleness. You can invest in making yourself your best with or without a relationship, as far as your heart is concerned.
Take care of how you look, act, and feel. Alternate your workouts by changing the cardio you do to keep your heart and mind interested. Make heart-healthy meals. Even if you are cooking for one, treat yourself royally and regularly to a D.A.S.H.-inspired home-cooked meal.
Know your numbers for blood pressure, what you weigh, your BMI, and your cholesterol levels. Get a good night’s sleep so you wake up rested, refreshed and ready to take on your day.
Create strong friendships with individuals you can count on for emotional support and encouragement, or in case forming platonic friendships is not your forte, get a therapist and join clubs, volunteer, take continuing education classes, or find some hobbies that interest you to be more of a social animal.
Practice yoga for the benefits of reducing stress. Treat yourself to a massage that you can regularly anticipate and frequently enjoy. Get health insurance, if you don’t already have it, to have improved access to healthcare. And if all else fails, get a dog for companionship.
