Marriage problems, such as arguing or feeling angry can hurt your heart, according to a study being presented Thursday at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Chicago.

In the study, researchers at the University of Utah looked at 276 middle-aged couples to see if bad relationships were bad for health. The participants were asked about positive aspects of marriage quality such as mutual support and sharing, and negative aspects such as arguing, feelings of hostility and disagreeing over important issues such as kids, sex, money and in-laws.

What they found was that for wives, negative marital stuff was associated to depression, which triggered metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that include elevated blood pressure, high triglycerides, low levels of HDL (good) cholesterol, abdominal obesity and elevated blood sugar. The problem is that all these factors are associated with an increased risk of heart attack and diabetes.

The men were as likely as the women to become depressed with marital strain, but the link between negativity, depression and metabolic syndrome only applied to women, the researchers noted. “For men, having a problematic marriage is still emotionally, but not physically, problematic healthwise.” Nancy Henry, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at the University of Utah, was quoted as saying.

Furthermore, study’s authors say that the implication of this research is that if you are interested in your cardiovascular risk, you should also take into consideration the quality of your emotional and family life.
Researchers say this is the first study to link marital interaction patterns between husbands to depression and metabolic syndrome.