Plastic Surgery for Men QT: Why is marriage good for men's health?

resource: The Orange County Register Loneliness, depression and social isolation cause men who've been divorced, widowed or never married to die at a much higher rate than married men, Harvard Men's Health Watch reports.

"Happily married men might add health to the things they thank their wives for," says the article in the July issue. The mag culled various studies to arrive at these conclusions:

* A survey of 127,545 American adults found that married men live longer than men without spouses, and that men who marry after age 25 get "more protection" than those who marry at a younger age.
* A report from the Framingham Offspring Study, in which 3,682 adults were evaluated over 10 years, shows that married men had a 46 percent lower death rate than unmarried men.
* That study indicated no difference between men who were in happy marriage vs. those who were miserable. But other studies showed a link between the stress of marital unhappiness to hypertension, a key risk factor for cardiac disease.
* Unmarried cancer patients are less likely to receive treatment for cancer, and more likely to have an advanced disease at the time of diagnosis. Among men with prostate cancer, 69 percent who were married survived a median of 69 months, compared with 49 months for those who never married and 38 months for widowers.
* Although men tend to die before their wives, they take losing a spouse much harder. In a study of 12,522 married couples over a 14- to 23-year period, 1,453 men and 3,294 women lost their spouses. Healthy men were 2.1 times more likely to die during the study period than healthy men who were not bereaved.
* A Harvard study says socially isolated men are 82 percent more likely to die from heart disease than men who have strong interpersonal relationships.

Married men also tend to take care of themselves better and do a better job of seeking out preventive medical care, which points to the benefits of having someone who cares about us prodding us to reduce bad habits and get to the doctor regularly. "One reason that widowers fare so poorly is that nutrition and other health habits deteriorate when men are on their own," the article states.