Every year heart attacks kill more women than they do men. And researchers have now identified a heart-risky event that’s a danger for women but doesn’t seem to have the same coronary lethality for men.
It’s called divorce.
Women who get divorced suffer more heart attacks. Even after they get married again.
A study at Duke shows that divorced women suffer heart attacks at a significantly higher rate than those who stay married. Go through two or more divorces and you just about double your heart attack risk.
And even when a woman gets remarried after a divorce, her heart attack risk still stays higher.
“Divorce is a major stressor, and we have long known that people who are divorced suffer more health consequences,” says researcher Matthew Dupre who teaches medicine at Duke. “But this is one of the first studies to look at the cumulative effect of divorce over a long period. We found that it can have a lasting imprint on people’s health.”
The Duke research looked at the marital history and heart health of 15,827 people between the ages of 45 to 80 who had been married one or more times. The people in the study were surveyed every two years from 1992 to 2010 about their health as well as their marital status. About one of every three people in the study got divorced one or more times during the 18-year study.
Even though men, overall, run a higher risk for suffering heart attacks, the study showed that women do worse than men after they get divorced. In the research, men who got divorced had about the same risk as those who stayed married. For men, it took two or more divorces to increase their heart attack risk significantly.
And for men, getting remarried after a divorce rescues their hearts – remarried men have the same heart attack risk as those who stayed married to one spouse.
Now, I’d never recommend staying with a spouse you can’t stand, even for the sake of your heart. But if you get divorced, pay special attention to keeping your heart strong.
Unfortunately, most women have been told that “cardio” and “aerobics” are heart-healthy. And they are to a certain extent. But you need capacity in your heart muscles – extra power to defend against sudden shocks – if you want to avoid sudden cardiac events like heart attacks. Endurance exercise doesn’t work for that. Instead, think high intensity interval training.
Here’s a primer on the right kind of exercise for strengthening your heart and preventing heart attacks. It will help you gain heart power and could save your life after stressful life events like divorce.
