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| Home page 27 votos. | Is
it really so nice to have a man around the house? Yes and no. A happy
marriage apparently helps protect women from strokes and heart attacks
after menopause, when their risk rises sharply. But a miserable match also
makes its mark, as seen on ultrasound scans of carotid arteries and the
aorta, by putting women at much higher risk for dying of cardiovascular
disease, a scientist reported.
The new findings may shed light on why marriage is shown to benefit women's health in some studies but not in others. Wives typically are grouped together, the happily and unhappily wed, and "that obscures the relationship between marriage and health," says Wendy Troxel, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, who presented her findings at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting here. In her study with psychologist Karen Matthews, 490 women were followed from premenopausal years in their 40s to at least five years after menopause. About three-quarters were married. Each married woman was asked how satisfied she was with several areas of her marriage. Among major findings: * Before menopause, the unhappily married were significantly worse off on heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol than either the happily wed or single women. * After menopause, happily married women had the best cardiovascular health, as seen on body scans. * Single women were significantly worse off, and so were women in unhappy marriages. |