Wedding Wednesday: Is marriage good for your health?

Now that we’re less than six months away from the big day, I thought I’d allow myself a few more wedding-related posts. No, this is still not a “wedding blog” (take note, people who google me and read my blog before I interview you!) but I’ve come across some interesting things while planning this shindig that I think are worth sharing here. Today: marriage and health.

Set aside the obvious stress of interpersonal relationships (and planning a ceremony and reception for 100+ people to celebrate them…) and it turns out that getting married is actually pretty good for you.

There’s the oxytocin release of falling in love, of course, but some research shows that partnering up with someone who makes you happy could actually help you live longer. That’s probably not news to you, but a new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that being married correlates with better outcomes from surgery.

From a release from JAMA Surgery:

Chances of survival after major surgery may be better among married vs unmarried persons, but little is known regarding the association between marital status and postoperative function. Characterizing the association between marital status and postoperative function may be useful for counseling patients and identifying at-risk groups that may benefit from targeted interventions aimed at improving functional recovery.

This is an important caveat about correlation vs. causation, which is nice and refreshing to see after this week’s drama about meat and cancer… which I might address in another post. But I found it really interesting that even though they aren’t entirely sure what led to this correlation, it could be useful for recovery purposes.

Mark D. Neuman and Rachel M. Werner of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania used data from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study to find this marriage connection. Participants in the University of Michigan study reported that they had undergone cardiac surgery, and some died after such surgery, which was reported by proxies, according to JAMA. At the post-surgery interview, 19 percent of married participants had either died or had worse health, compared to 29 percent of divorced or separated people, 34 percent of widowed participants and 20 percent of participants who had never been married.

Participants who were divorced, separated, or widowed had an approximately 40 percent greater odds of dying or developing a new functional disability during the first 2 years after cardiac surgery compared with the married participants.

“These findings extend prior work suggesting postoperative survival advantages for married people and may relate to the role of social supports in influencing patients’ choices of hospitals and their self-care,” the authors said, adding as usual that more research is needed. You can see the study here.

Of course I hope neither my fiance nor I have to have heart surgery at any point, but heart issues run in both of our families, so it’s good to know that if and when it happens, we might have a slightly better chance of recovery! As always, it’ll be interesting to watch what comes out of further research.

Research Roundup

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about any cool health science, and a lot of really interesting research has been released over the past few weeks. These all happen to be from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Suicide among veterans: At the beginning of the month, JAMA Psychiatry announced that a recent study had found no association between deployment in support of U.S. operations in Iraq and a higher rate of suicide. This is interesting because psychiatrists and other researchers have been trying to figure out for years exactly why so many soldiers do end up taking their own lives upon returning home, and how to potentially prevent those suicides. This study showed that while there was an increased risk of suicide associated with “separation from military service,” regardless of whether the person had deployed. This raises a lot of questions, including – Is there something about being in the military (or maybe having the predisposition to want to join the military) that may increase risk of suicide, as opposed to the long-assumed answer that the experience of combat is simply too much for some people to bear? As usual, more research is needed, but the researchers do note that leaving the military after less than four years and leaving without an honorable discharge were risk factors.

Autism: Two pretty important studies about children on the autism spectrum have been released over the last couple of months. The first, a population-based study of twins in the U.K., found that the likelihood of showing symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder was more closely correlated with genetic traits than with environmental factors. And the second, just released a few days ago, is yet another study showing that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. This particular report shows that in a large sample of privately insured children, getting the MMR vaccine had no impact on the likelihood of having autism, regardless of whether an older sibling was on the spectrum. (Important point in the comments below about why the siblings were included.)

Sickle cell anemia: All I can say about this is: look out for an interesting study about sickle cell anemia. This disease only affects a specific part of the population but the way treatments for it are approached is telling and important.