Divorce and Midlife Health

Divorce and Health by Mid-life

Divorce and Health by Mid

Divorce may have a lasting negative impact on your health, even if you remarry claims national sociological research.

Those who marry once and remain married are at a greater physical and mental health advantage than those who later divorce suggests a study published in Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Health advantages for the continuously married remain even if the divorced individuals later remarry.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative long term study of individuals over fifty, sociologists Linda Waite and Mary Hughes examined martial transitions and disruptions.

Divorced individuals reported more chronic health issues including heart disease, cancer, and stroke, than those who stayed married.  Remarriage provided only a slight amelioration of these outcomes.

Lower physical functioning, such as difficulty with walking and light exercise, were also more likely to be reported in those previously married and currently remarried.

However, the real culprit may be  the profound and lasting impact that stress on the body, especially when left untreated.

Stress has been found to influence the immune system in powerful ways: slower healing times, diminished immune responses to vaccines, and reactivation of previous sicknesses according to Health psychologist and immunologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser.

Since divorce causes stress across every facet of an individual’s life, it may be the stress from the divorce and afterward that is the real cause.

So while the study reveals the damaging effects of divorce, it does not [rove that a person should stay in a damaging, stressful  or violent relationship.