A new research has discovered the missing link between marital status and mortality.
If you are baffled by the mere fact that such a link even exists then brace yourself for whatever you are going to be reading next.
The research concluded that the people who end their marriages before time, or the divorced people are risking themselves to a shorter lifespan. The logic was quite logical, actually. They said that divorced people are more likely to go down the path of addiction such as smoking, which eventually decreases their lifespan. Such people become prone to sloth, hence their physical activity decreases and lead to premature death.
The lead author of this study, Kyle Bourassa said that they were trying to fill in the gaps when it comes to linking marital status with lifespan. The author is a researcher from the University of Arizona, US.
Researchers collected the material for study from the English Longitudinal Study of Aging. In the longitudinal study of Aging, people above the age of 50 from Great Britain were included. The study started in 2002, the participants were supposed to report their smoking status, workout frequency, lung function, levels of inflammation, and life satisfaction after every two years. This means the data was collected in seven waves. There were 5786 such participants and out of these 926 people were the ones who decided not to marry after the divorce along with the people who decided to marry after the divorce and the people who were separated. The rest of 4860 people were married.
After keeping the track of the data provided by the participants for 16 years, the researchers concluded that the risk of dying of the divorced or separated people was 46% more than the people who were still married. In the case of women, the risk was even greater.
This study was published in the journal named Annals of Behavioral Medicine.
Although the research did not offer the explanation of this conclusion, the researchers had their own explanation to give. Bourassa said that the people refuse to exercise or tend to smoke more because they have no one who will hold them accountable any longer. Spouses try to reverse the bad habits of their partners, when divorced, however, there is no one.
However, separation brings some amount of positivity in our lives as well. The outcomes are not always negative. For example, the people who were in unhealthy relationships experience an increase in the quality of their lives.