Report: Happy Marriage equals Happy Heart

Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a psychologist who specializes in relationships and health at the Brigham Young University, and her team did this study involving 204 married and 99 single adults who wore portable blood-pressure monitors for 24 hours. The monitors recorded blood pressure at random intervals and provided about 72 readings. The main purpose of these random measurements was to get a good overall behavioral response over the course of the day. Julianne Holt-Lunstad said in a prepared statement to the press about the results:

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 of health is having a happy marriage.

The study showed happily married people scored four points lower on the blood pressure readings than single adults. The pressure also dipped more in married couples during their sleep compared to single adults. Holt-Lunstad said, "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." Holt-Lunstad and her team found that unhappily married adults had higher blood pressure recordings compared with both happily married and single adults. She also encouraged spouses to assist each other another to have healthy eating habits and to visit the doctor regularly. She said in happy marriages, the couples provide emotional support for each other. The study found even a supportive social network did not translate into a blood pressure benefit for singles as much as for unhappily married couples. The study was published in the March 20 issue of the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine. I am sure DJ writers, Cynthia (Picasso), Jaguar, Brandigal, Amaranth and many more here will agree with this theory.