Women with sick, crabby husbands feel worse about marriage

Women report higher levels of marital conflict if they have unhealthy and bad-tempered husbands, a recent study of older couples has found, but husbands do not feel the same way.

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Wives were more likely to report a high level of conflict in their marriage when their husbands were in fair or poor physical health, were highly neurotic or extrovert, and low on positivity. The husbands did not report a high level of conflict for similar characteristics in wives. However, women reported less conflict than men overall.

“We speculate that men in American marital relationships are generally more given to demonstrating their frustration, whereas women tend to reserve their negative feelings for the sake of preserving harmonious interactions,” said the researchers, who looked at 953 heterosexual married or live-in couples 63-90 years of age.

“It could be that men who are higher in positivity are better able to avoid or regulate negative affect for the sake of positive marital interactions,” they said, pointing to the beneficial effects of a healthy attitude.

One of the partners being sick could impact the quality of the union, as it might shift caregiving roles or increase stress in the relationship, said the researchers.

The researchers also referred to earlier research that shows marriage quality is closely related to quality of health. They pointed out that while married people have better mental and physical health and a lower risk of dying than those who are unmarried, if the quality of a marriage is bad then these outcomes become worse than those for unmarried people.

In other words, it is better for your health to be unmarried than to be in a bad marriage.

 

Your genes may affect weight gain from fried foods

A person’s genes may affect how much fat is retained by the body after eating fried foods, a new study has found.

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Now before you start chomping down on that fried chicken leg, blaming the weight gain on your biology, stop. The study also found that those who were genetically predisposed to obesity put on more fat by eating fried food than those who were not. This points to the need to continue eating healthy, especially if you are genetically predisposed to putting on weight.

“Our study shows that a higher genetic risk of obesity may amplify the adverse effects of fried food consumption on body weight, and high intakes of fried food may also exacerbate the deleterious genetic effects,” said Harvard public health professor Lu Qi, lead author of the study.

Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health and other leading health organizations analyzed a large amount of data from three different ongoing studies to come to their conclusions.

People who tended to eat fried food more often also happened to exercise less, have unhealthier eating habits overall, higher total food consumption and a more sedentary lifestyle. This lifestyle in itself is prone to make one overweight, and if genetic predisposition to obesity is added to the mix, the weight gain could become even greater.

“Our findings further emphasize the importance of reducing consumption of fried food in the prevention of obesity, particularly in individuals genetically predisposed to adiposity,” said the researchers.

The study was published in British Medical Journal on Mar 19, 2014.