Health Risk Associated With Singleness...

A lot of factors affect our long-term health, including family medical history and our personal habits. How about your relationship status? Some research indicates that the longer you stay single, the higher your risk of dying younger that your married peers.

Here are some of the risk...

• Single people experience more of a risk of heart health problems. A study from the American College of Cardiology showed that single people were 5 percent more apt to develop heart disease. It’s hard to explain why, but it might be taken into consideration that people who are married are more likely to have spouses that watch what they eat and encourage consistent medical check ups.

• The same study showed that single people tend to be smokers more often than married people, and that alone brings on its own set of health risks.

In addition to the addiction to smoking, single people tend to be more likely to have other risk-related habits than their married peers, such as depression, excessive thinking, alcohol or drugs.

• Studies have also shown that married people have fewer accidents that single people, with single women in particular having the highest number. In fact, single and/or divorced women are nearly twice as likely to be involved in an accident. Reason being that married women have emotional attachments to their home (family) as against single women. 

• On the work front, married folks have fewer annual sick days on average that their single peers. Once study showed that a married person has an average of six sick days a year, compared to 7.3 for singles and 9.8 for divorced and widowed folks.

Explanations as to why married people tend to be healthy point to these concepts: 

• Married people tend to have better health habits. 
• Married folks have more support around them.
• ​Married people may be better off financially and be more apt to have health insurance. 

Again, a lot depends on a person’s family history and their own eating and exercise habits, but it also seems on the plus side to have someone else around who cares about your health.

Cheers.