is getting married, according to science

We live obsessed with longevity, trying to extend life as much as possible, despite the fact that Our own biology puts a very clear brake on us that is very difficult to remove.. restrictive diets, intermittent fasting either treatments Very expensive are some of the actions we use on a daily basis to be able to last more and more years in this life. However, there is a factor that we did not expect to influence living longer: getting married and choosing your life partner well.

This is an idea that spread Dan Buettner, the expert who popularized the concept of “Blue Zones” like Japan and that at 64 years old he dedicated decades to studying the regions of the world where people live the longest. And the truth is that the conclusion he saw is that the basis of longevity is having a strong marriage (among other things).

But this conclusion, which has been drawn through everything he has seen on his travels, must also be found to have a correlation within scientific studies. And the truth is that what he says is not very crazy, and it makes us consider the fact of having to better look for who we are going to share our entire life with.

And Buettner points out that on average married people live between 2 and 5 years longer than those who remain single, divorced or widowed. In blue zones, family unity is the central value. Buettner argues that marriage offers long-term emotional stability and helps build social support networks, which drastically reduces the risk of isolation, one of the great enemies of health in old age.

In addition, there is a component of shared responsibility: having a partner implies mutual motivation to take care of yourself, from food to having to go to the doctor because your partner reminds you or insists. All because in the end they are worrying about themselves.

The studies. Buettner’s claims are not mere anecdotal observations; They are supported by massive meta-analyses that have scrutinized the health of millions of individuals.

Specifically, an exhaustive study published in Global Health Research and Policy in 2020 analyzed data from 7,881,040 individuals across 21 prospective cohort studies. The results were compelling: Compared with married people, being unmarried (including single, divorced, and widowed) was significantly associated with higher mortality from all causes such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Difference by sex. In addition to providing this strong conclusion, it was also clearly found that the association between not being married and mortality was stronger in men than in women. Precisely, unmarried men showed a 20% higher risk of dying from a cardiac event compared to unmarried women. As if having a woman by your side was a protective factor from this event.

But it does not stop there, since men who had married also had a 31% excess risk of mortality from stroke compared to women who had never married.

Although staying single is not the only thing that can attract attention. Being divorced or separated was associated with a higher risk of mortality from any cause in men. But when the marriage dissolved, the risk of dying from cancer and cardiovascular diseases increased.

Another study. Published in Social Science & Medicine and focused specifically on the elderly population, reinforced this initial thesis that we proposed. To do this, 53 independent comparisons were analyzed with more than 250,000 older subjects, finding that being married was a very important protective factor.

If we go into detail, the data indicated that there was a 12% reduction in the risk of dying due to being married. When breaking down the data by marital status compared to married, the risk of death was increasing in all groups.

Because. Science wants to understand the reasons that lead to this relationship. One of the first is focused on chronic stress and cortisol, which is undoubtedly a silent killer. It has been suggested that not being married contributes to less intimate social networks and loneliness, which increases levels of stress hormones, especially as the end of life approaches.

In addition, it has also been seen that women have a stronger immune system than men, in part because testosterone causes immunosuppression. On the other hand, there are the estrogens in women that have many protective functions.

From a social perspective, married men tend to benefit more because they often depend on their wives for their primary social support. Men who live alone are more likely to ignore medical advice and have smaller, less intimate social networks.

Images | Eugenia Pan’kiv Aron Visuals

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