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Heart Attack Risk Jumps After Divorce

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A new study shows that after a divorce people have an increased lifetime risk for heart attacks (myocardial infarction). Although previous studies have found that MIs occur more frequently in people who are divorced, this is the first study to prospectively examine the lifetime relationship between divorce and MI.

In a paper published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, Duke University researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative cohort of 16,000 adults who were followed from 1992 to 2010. The strength of the association was similar to that of established risk factors like smoking, diabetes, and high blood pressure. The findings suggest that the strength of the link between MI and divorce is comparable to the link with job loss and unemployment. The increased risk was not explained by other  social, psychological, or physiological factors that have been shown to influence  MI.

"Contrary to expectations and existing literature, we found that losses of income and health insurance, and increases in depressive symptoms, alcohol use, and smoking,  did not account for the excess risks attributable to a history of divorce in men and women," the authors wrote. "We suspect that the acute and chronic stress associated with divorce may have played an important role in our findings for both sexes."

The findings were different for men and women. Men who divorced and remarried did not have an increased MI risk but remarried women had an increased risk comparable with women who remained divorced. 

Comment:

It's always difficult to interpret an observational study of this nature. First it's imperative to state yet again that correlation does not equal causation. It's entirely possible that there are underlying factors that lead, through very different paths, to both divorce and MI. In this case, it's especially hard to know what to do with the information linking divorce to MI. The best advice might be to somehow have a happy marriage, but no one really chooses to have an unhappy marriage. This study can't tell you if it's a good idea or a bad idea to get a divorce. There's no reason to think that staying in an unhappy marriage would be lower risk than getting a divorce. Unlike some other risk factors for MI, like smoking or high blood pressure, divorce is not a modifiable risk factor in any practical sense.