Generally, research has shown that having close relationships can have significant physical health benefits. Interestingly, new research has shown that there is a nuance to this that seems somewhat obvious: having close relationships cloaked in negativity can be harmful to your health. For both men and women in the study, there was around a 34% increase in risk for heart problems.
What’s behind the bad marriage, bad heart link? People may mentally “replay” the negative interactions, De Vogli and other researchers suspect. “It can activate emotional responses, including depression or hostility,” he says, in turn boosting heart disease risk. De Vogli found the association held for both men and women and for those in higher and lower social positions. More likely to have negative relationships, he did find, were those in lower-grade jobs. Negative close relationships were less likely in people who were never married.
I don’t think that the mental stress-physical health link is new to anyone, which is essentially how I read this article. An interesting dilemma in heart disease treatment thus becomes whether getting out of a bad marriage (or at least trying to improve it) could literally be recommended along with eating better and laying off alcohol and cigarettes.
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Stressful Relationships & Heart Attacks by medTRIALS.info (10/9/2007)
From Psych Central's World of Psychology:
Friday Flashback for October 12, 2007 - World of Psychology (10/12/2007)
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2 Comments to
“Stressful Relationships & Heart Attacks”
Very insightful post…I agree with it…
Oh well on this World Mental Health Day, I want to request all the people who are mentally ill should communicate and share their feelings with others, which can help them enormously. They should keep in touch with friends and family members so that they can take help whenever they feel lonely.
Came across the article.Its very true,a close relationship/marriage/live-in realtionship,in cases when dont work out.The high chances of the person is to be stressed at work,which creates im-balance of both personaland professional life.Most of people suffer from cases like lack of sleep and high itake of alcohol and nicotine.This adds more to the mental stress.I believe in such cases its advisble to see a psycologist or practice meditation/yoga to relieve the stressful living
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 9 Oct 2007
