Is marriage bad for your physical health?

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Is marriage bad for your physical health?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People who remain single, or remarried through divorce, may be slightly more physically fit than happily married people, a new study suggests.

The study, which followed nearly 8,900 adults over several years, found that both men and women who were married during that time experienced a decline in cardiovascular fitness, as measured by the treadmill test.
In contrast, men who divorced during the study saw little increase in their fitness levels.

The findings, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, do not prove that changes in marital status directly cause changes in fitness -- for better or worse.

Still, the researchers said the findings support the idea that once people are married and perhaps, out of the dating market, they let themselves go a bit. But if they're single or divorced, they have more incentive to get in shape.

It goes without saying that there is a huge fitness gap between singles and married couples. In this study, changes in marital status were associated with only small changes in fitness, said lead researcher Dr. Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Francisco B. Ortega told Reuters Health in an e-mail.

The findings are based on 6,900 men and 1,971 women followed for just over three years at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas. They had physical examinations, reported on their lifestyle habits, and underwent treadmill tests to determine their physical fitness.

When it came to marital status, the researchers found, women who remained single during the study period showed a slight increase in their fitness levels over time. That benefit was not seen in married women.

For their part, married men's fitness declined -- but so did those who remained single, albeit with a smaller loss. For men, the differences were even more pronounced when the researchers looked at divorce and remarriage.

Divorced men showed a gain in fitness levels during the study, while those who remained married showed no change. Meanwhile, men who divorced early on showed a general decline in fitness over time -- but the drop was steepest among those who remarried.

There was no evidence of a "benefit" of divorce among women. However, the researchers say that one reason may be that there were far fewer women than men in the study and that only a small number of women changed their marital status during the follow-up period. And it fits with the general idea that major life changes affect people's health habits, noted Dr. Steven N. Blair.