Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, and apparently marriage and better health are also a natural match — for diabetes patients, anyway.
According to a study by Dr. Yoshinobu Kondo and colleagues at Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine and Chigasaki Municipal Hospital in Japan, married people with type 2 diabetes are healthier than their single counterparts.
Marriage: A Diabetes Wonder Drug?
The study examined the medical records of 270 patients with type 2 diabetes from 2010 to 2016 and found that the patients who were married were less likely to be overweight than single people with the blood sugar disease. The findings also suggest that diabetic patients who live with a spouse are less likely to suffer from metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions like high blood pressure and high blood sugar that can increase the risk of stroke and heart disease.
The group researchers studied included 180 married patients (109 men and 71 women) and 90 single patients (46 men and 44 women). The married people with the disease had a lower average body mass index (24.5) than single people (26.5) (note: the index measures body fat based on height and weight).
When adjusting the statistics to compensate for factors such as age and gender, the doctors found that married people with type 2 diabetes were 50 percent less likely to be overweight than single people with the same condition.
There was no significant difference in the weight aspect between men and women, but the study did find that married men were at a 58 percent lower risk of metabolic syndrome than single men. For women, however, there was no evidence of any such linkage.
*Editor’s Note: Findings from the study were presented at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Munich, Germany, details of which were made public via a press release. Research presented at meetings is considered preliminary until it’s officially published in a peer-reviewed journal.