QuickCheck: Does being in love lower your blood pressure?

WITH Valentine’s Day (and Chap Goh Mei) just a few days away, we thought it would be interesting to look at a myth related to the holiday and love in general. So to kick things off, apparently being in love can lower your blood pressure.

Is this true?

Verdict:

TRUE

Many studies have shown that people in happy marriages tend to have lower blood pressure levels but it isn’t the state of matrimony that matters – it’s the loving part.

According to a study published in 2008 in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine journal, couples (both married and dating) in “high-quality” (loving) relationships had lower blood pressure levels than people in “low-quality” relationships.

Talking about married couples in particular, in an analysis of cardiovascular disease risk, the American College of Cardiology found married couples under 50 tended to have a 12% lower risk of vascular disease, whereas couples aged 51 to 60 had a 7% lower risk than their single counterparts.

But as stated earlier, it’s not so much the union that matters but the quality of the union.

In 2015, the University of Michigan conducted a study that followed 1,300 couples for six years.

It found that when a wife was stressed, her husband’s systolic blood pressure tended to go up.

If both spouses thought their marriage wasn’t going well, the husband’s blood pressure spiked even higher.

For wives, while their blood pressure reading was higher if the relationship wasn’t going well, it tended to drop if the husband reported more stress.

References:

1. https://academic.oup.com/abm/article/35/2/239/4569261?login=true

2. https://academic.oup.com/ajh/article/12/2/227/246935?login=false

3. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320192610.htm