Divorce is not a fun path to follow. You have to be sure that there are no other options before cutting ties with your future ex-spouse. Besides time and expense, there are other considerations to factor in. One of them, health, was just verified as a risk factor in divorce according to a study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
It turns out that eight percent of a sample of 15,827 adults ages 45 to 80, all of whom were married or had been previously, had a heart attack before their follow-up interview. And amongst the large sample, women had an even worse time of it.
After creating a baseline of health and lifestyle factors, the researchers found that compared with a woman who was continuously married, a woman who had been divorced once had a 24% increased risk of heart attack. Those who had been divorced twice had a 77% increased risk, and remarried a 35% increased risk.
"Divorce isn't a classical risk factor, like smoking or high blood pressure," said the lead author, Matthew E. Dupre, an associate professor of sociology at Duke. "But we hope that caretakers and the general public will have a greater understanding of how the stress of divorce can affect their lives."
For more:
Divorce May Be Bad for the Heart, Especially for Women (NY Times)
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