Studies have generally shown that married people live longer and are healthier than single people. A new study published online in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine (March 20, 2008) shows that there is a caveat to these findings. It found that a happy marriage can indeed be good for your blood pressure, but stress in a marriage has serious health implications.
The subjects of the study were 204 married and 99 single adults. Blood pressure was recorded randomly over a 24 hour period by a monitor worn by the subjects. The subjects who were married filled out questionnaires about their marriages. Those with stressful or unhappy marriages had about a five point higher systolic (top number) blood pressure readings on average. So the surprise here is that a stressful marriage can be less healthy than being single.
