For Your Health’s Sake: Try a Little Tenderness
You are concerned about your heart, so you don’t smoke, you eat a healthful diet and you exercise on a regular basis. Perhaps you should also lay off the negativity and controlling comments when you talk to your spouse.
A 3-year study of older married couples conducted by psychologists from the University of Utah has shown a link between the quality of relationships and atherosclerosis, or the narrowing of the arteries that carry blood to the heart.
In the study, researchers evaluated videotapes of dialogue between 150 married couples. (At least one member of each couple was beween 60 and 70 years of age.) Sitting across a table from each other, the couples were asked to talk about a subject of disagreement in their marriage, be it money, in-laws, children or household duties.
Two days later, each partner underwent a CT scan of the chest to determine his or her level of coronary artery blockage.
The findings differed according to gender. For the female, hostility in the marital relationship–whether on her part or her husband’s–was associated with a build-up of plaque in the coronary arteries. For the man, the important factor was not hostility but control. Those who were controlling toward their wife, or had a controlling spouse, were more likely to have atherosclerosis.
“A low-quality relationship is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease,” concludes study researcher Tim Smith of the University of Utah. However, it seems that men and women focus on different factors in gauging a relationship’s “quality.” –adapted from the Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2006.
