A new study shows that divorcees are more likely to have a heart attack than their peers who stay married. Researchers from Duke University studied men and women between 1992 and 2010 and discovered that people who got divorced were more likely to incur heart attacks than couples who stay married.
They analyzed more than 15,000 people and found out that women were worst affected, report BBC News. However, even if these women remarry, it does not reduce the risk at all. In the study published in the journal Circulation, they cited stress associated with divorce had the most impact on the body.
"This risk is comparable to that of high blood pressure or if you have diabetes, so it's right up there, it is pretty big," Prof. Linda George, one of the researchers said.
Reuters reported that at the start of the study, 14% of men and around 19% of women were divorced; and by the end of the study, more than one third of participants had been divorced at least once.
Women who got divorced once were 24% more likely to have a heart attack than women who stayed married. In men, they had 10% increased risk when they got divorced once and 30% when they divorced twice.
Matthew E. Dupre of Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina told Reuters, "Men are also much more likely to remarry after divorce than women, and among those who remarry, men remarry sooner than women."
Divorce may take a toll to the body through imposing chronic stress. However, if the person feels better after a divorce, he or she might have coped well with it.
He added, "If you feel your divorce was done for good reasons, you've coped well with the transition after a period of grief, you've got most of your life back together . . . or, at least, you feel headed in the right direction, these results may not apply."