Unhappy Marriages Could Really Break your Heart….It increases the risk of a heart attack

'Growing evidence suggests that the quality and patterns of one’s social relationships may be linked with a variety of health outcomes, including heart disease,' said Thomas Kamarck of the University of Pittsburgh, who led a research on the effect of relationships on health of persons.

'The contribution of this study is in showing that these sorts of links may be observed even during the earliest stages of plaque development [in the carotid artery], and that these observations may be rooted not just in the way that we evaluate our relationships in general but in the quality of specific social interactions with our partners as they unfold during our daily lives.'

Unhappy Marital relationships increases the risk of heart attacks by 8.5 percent

They concluded that 'Biological, psychological, and social processes all interact to determine physical health.'

Given the size of the effect in the study and the relationship between carotid artery plaque and disease, researcher Nataria Joseph’s findings indicate that those with marital interactions may have an 8.5 percent greater risk of suffering heart attack or stroke than those with a surfeit(excess) of good feelings.
 

Joseph says that these associations could not be accounted for by other behavioral or biological risk factors and were also independent of marital interaction frequency, nonmarital social interaction, or personality factors. The findings were consistent across age, sex, race, and education level.

There are limitations to the study, Joseph says, because it is a cross-sectional study with all the data collected at one point in time. Causality, therefore, has not been proven, though a strong correlation has been established.

'What it does show,” she says, “is that health care providers should look at relationships as a point of assessment. 'They are likely to promote health or place health at risk.'