Just when statistics are showing divorce rates are up and marriage on the decline, new information from studies in the United States and Australia may have couples running for the alter.
The PROGRESS study, involving 6,000 patients in 10 countries, offers evidence that lowering blood pressure may well be the key to preventing repeat strokes.
Giving stroke patients blood-pressure-lowering diuretics and an ACE inhibitor drug can halve the risk of their suffering a second stroke, study leader Dr. John Chalmers of the University of Sydney, Australia, told the European Society of Hypertension last June. The combo seems to be protective even to patients whose blood pressure is normal.
"There is a strong case for making these drugs available to most stroke patients, irrespective of their age and blood pressure and of other treatments they may be receiving," Chalmers says.
But what does this have to do with marriage?
Another study, involving 120 healthy adults and conducted at the State University of New York, shows that when people are with their spouse, or significant other, their blood pressure goes down.
Psychiatrist Dr. Brooks Gump found that systolic and diastolic blood-pressure measurements were lower during interaction with a partner than with any other person. The 56 men and 64 women who participated and had each been living with a partner for three months or more wore Holter monitors to measure their blood pressure over the course of a normal working day. Every 45 minutes, the device signalled and prompted the participant to respond to a questionnaire on an electronic diary. The diary entries correlated the data that linked the person's social experience with variations in blood pressure.
While finding that being in a pleasurable domestic situation leads to healthy blood pressure was not an unanticipated conclusion, what was surprising, says Gump, was that subjects who rated their relationships as less than satisfactory also optimized their blood pressures.
There may also be a predictability factor, Gump adds. Being with someone you know very well is calming even if you don't like the person very much. But the protective effect may have limitations.
"If the relationship gets bad enough, there's nothing to say they won't eventually end up throwing crockery at each other and escalating their blood pressures."