Divorce heartbreak has lasting health consequences

Health problems from the stresses of divorce or a partner's death persist even after remarriage, a study found.

Divorced or widowed people have 20 percent more chronic health problems such as diabetes and cancer than married people, according to a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Health and Social behavior. People who remarry suffer 12 percent more of these conditions than those continuously married.

About half of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce, according to the National Institutes of Health. Married adults are less likely to smoke, drink heavily, or suffer psychological distress, research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown. The difference among the groups is probably due to stress, said Linda Waite, an author of the study and a sociologist at the University of Chicago.

"People end up ignoring their own health because divorces are messy, or a partner is dying," Waite said. "So they're not exercising, they're sleeping poorly, they aren't seeing their friends, maybe they're not eating."

The study used data collected by the Health and Retirement Study on more than 8,652 people aged 51 to 61. People in the study were asked if they suffered from chronic conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes or stroke. They were also asked if they had difficulty walking a block and climbing a flight of stairs.

Never Married

There was no difference between people who had never married and people who were continuously married in terms of chronic disease, according to the research. The two groups diverged on another point: those who had never married were 12 percent more limited in terms of mobility.

Divorced people who didn't remarry had 23 percent more difficulty climbing stairs or walking a block compared with the continuously married, the study found. Those who remarried had 19 percent more difficulty moving than the continuously married.

There was no evidence that multiple divorces were worse for health than a single divorce, the study found.

It may be that those who were less healthy were also more likely to get a divorce and less likely to remarry, the authors wrote. This may also explain the disparity between the married, the divorced, and the single.

"The thing to keep in mind is that your marital status affects the chances of chronic conditions but doesn't make them a certainty," said Waite. "Anything you can do to mitigate the effects of stress should help. In the midst of a divorce or being widowed, you need to remember to take care of yourself."