How Relationships Affect The Heart (For Better Or For Worse)

Love has long been associated with the heart, despite the latter being nothing but a hot wet pumping organ. Which string of words might conjure an image of a different kind of love, but what we mean here is: as body parts go, it’s a fairly simple mechanical thing that doesn’t do much.

It has one job, if it does that one job well, we rarely think about it much at all.

So, what’s this about relationships and heart health?

How well cared-for is your heart?

Firstly, it is well-established in science that strong relationships tend to be associated with strong health.

We wrote about that here: Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!

Of course, there are limitations to this association, including that causality is not clear. For example, without examining further, it could be that people in poor health are less likely to have good relationships (because people are impatient, the stress of ill health places a strain on the relationship, financial problems are more likely, and so forth).

However, when we do look at more specific things, rather than all-cause mortality, or looking at people’s relationship status at the time of their death, and recording such things as “a married person died at this age”, “a widowed person died at this other age”, etc, asking very clear-cut questions about health, relationships, and the timelines of events, can deliver some much clearer results. For example,

❝In 34 studies with a total of > 2 million participants, unmarried people (i.e., never married, divorced, or widowed) were > 40% more likely to have CVD and die from a myocardial infarction than were married people.❞

Source: Marital status and risk of cardiovascular diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Most recently, a team of researchers (Dr. Heather Tulloch et al.) examined whether couples-based cardiac rehabilitation improves cardiovascular risk factors, cardiac outcomes, mental health, and relationship quality in adults with heart disease and their partners.

As Dr. Tulloch herself said,

❝Sometimes heart disease brings couples closer together, but often it’s a challenge for the relationship and both people in it. We’ve learned over the years that cardiac events do not only happen to the patient, but to the couple❞

In this case, across 12 randomized controlled trials involving 1,444 patient-partner dyads, 77% of studies reported improvements in health behaviors, while evidence for cardiac outcomes and mental health benefits was mixed.

You can read her work in full here: What About Love? A Review of Interventions for Patients With Heart Disease and Their Intimate Partners: Recommendations for Cardiac Rehabilitation

So what gives?

One factor may be the manner of the data collection, as most were nurse-led CBT-centric programs and focused primarily on behavior change such as diet, physical activity, and medication adherence.

Some things appear to be sex-specific. Among women, a single-unit increase in negative relationship quality has been associated with a nearly 10-fold increase in uncontrolled hypertension, whereas a single-unit increase in positive relationship quality has been related to a 70% decrease in the risk of hypertension.

Source: Bad marriage, broken heart? Age and gender differences in the link between marital quality and cardiovascular risks among older adults

For men, in contrast, relationship distress is known to mobilize circulating lipids and to lead to upsurges in circulating inflammatory markers such as interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein all of which can (and often do) contribute to the development and progression of CVD.

Source: Acute stress-induced blood lipid reactivity in hypertensive and normotensive men and prospective associations with future cardiovascular risk

For people in general, more physical intimacy is closely correlated with lower cortisol levels, and thus (all else being equal) better heart health.

Source: Positive couple interactions and daily cortisol: On the stress-protecting role of intimacy

We wrote on that topic before; you can check out that article here: Better Sex = Longer Life (Here’s How)

…and while we’re at it: Who Initiates Sex & Why It Matters

Of course, not every relationship is beneficial, sadly. Remember when we mentioned how “only one kind of relationship promotes longevity this much”? Well, that was about happy, secure, loving, fulfilling relationships.

But what if that’s not what we have? In such a case, see: Relationships: When To Stick It Out & When To Call It Quits

And lastly (and for posterity, this article was written in the second half of December), it is worth mentioning:

For many who are suffering with prolonged grief, the holidays can be a time to reflect and find meaning in loss

Which means: for almost all of us, regardless of relationship status, there is something that we can do to improve our health in this regard.

So, if you’re in a relationship (a good one!), please do take care of it.

And either way, please do take care of yourself 🙂

Want to learn more?

You might like this book that we reviewed a little while back:

Just One Heart: A Cardiologist’s Guide to Healing, Health, and Happiness – by Dr. Jonathan Fisher

Enjoy!