Memory researcher Fabricio Ballarini says that those who live as a couple end up using each other's brains to save part of their memories, and that when that person disappears, part of the other half also disappears. This partial fusion of people who have lived together for decades has an impact not only on memories or customs, but also on the body. Recently, the Journal of the American Heart Association published a study that collected data from more than 30,000 couples around the world and concluded that between 20 and 50% of couples suffer from high blood pressure.
Of these heterosexual couples, who averaged between 50 and 75 years of age, 37.9% of cases in the United States, 47.1% in England, 20.8% in China, and 19.8% in India were both men and women Women are also affected by high blood pressure. The impact on women's health was greater in countries where high blood pressure is less common. Compared to women married to men with healthy blood pressure, American and English women living with a hypertensive man had a 9% higher risk of having high blood pressure; the Indians, 19% more; and the Chinese 26%. For husbands, the percentages were similar in each country.
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The authors state that their results show that couple interventions against high blood pressure can be useful, both in tests to detect it and in the application of lifestyle changes aimed at reducing high blood pressure, increasing physical activity, reducing stress, or through contribute to nutrition. All of these changes are more difficult to introduce and maintain if the people who live together do not adopt them at the same time.
High blood pressure isn't the only illness that couples often share. In a study from the Universities of Tohoku (Japan) and Groningen (Netherlands), which used data from more than 5,000 Japanese couples and more than 28,000 Dutch couples, it was found that couples often have similar blood pressure or the same cholesterol levels and also common diseases such as diabetes. Another study published in the BMJ observed that those accompanying people with certain non-communicable diseases had a higher risk of developing them. The risk increased by at least 70% for asthma, depression and stomach ulcers.
A “match” in habits and even genetics
All of this happens, on the one hand, because couples have common habits, such as playing sports or consuming alcohol or tobacco, and have a similar body mass index or waist circumference. But beyond that, people usually mate with people who are similar to them, especially in aspects such as educational or economic level and social environment, but also from a genetic perspective. A 2013 study published in PNAS found that couples have greater genetic similarity than two randomly selected people, although the effect of this match in terms of educational level is at most a third of that. Although the mechanisms that lead to this selection of a similar partner are not well understood, it appears that the familiarity of those who look like us is attractive, and that may partly explain that when two people live together for a long time ultimately united in health and illness.
Over time, physical synchronization is accompanied by a psychological rhythm that increases the influence on the partner's health. A study led by Shannon Mejía, a couples health specialist at the University of Illinois (USA), concluded that beliefs about aging are contagious and have an impact on a partner's health. The negative idea of being able to maintain an active life can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you stop exercising because you believe you are too old, and the same goes for the belief that aging is something inevitable is that cannot be acted upon. For Mejía, “the knowledge of couples, including their norms, rituals and beliefs.” [construidas a lo largo de décadas de convivencia] “can help gerontologists support couples’ successful aging together.”
Doctor's appointments as a couple
Gonzalo Grandes, Head of the Primary Care Research Unit in Bizkaia, explains: “The concept of family medicine arises from the recognition that couples and their children have similarities. On this basis, we should proceed with the family nucleus as the target, but in practice we continue to use individualized medicine with a medical history that is not related to that of the rest of the family, which would provide a lot of information for the treatment.” For Grandes, this family vision is useful , to address problems such as childhood obesity, which requires work on nutrition and physical activity that depends on the parents or grandparents who take care of the children. “The idea that we have the socio-health intervention at the family level and on “We need to structure the system at the level of the entire community in order to effectively promote health, is theoretically accepted, but we have to work to implement it.” is very complex,” concludes the specialist.
Isabel Egocheaga, head of the cardiovascular sector of the Spanish Society of General and Family Physicians (SEMG), explains that although hospital medicine does not normally make appointments for couples, family medicine does. “It does happen in older couples, but not in younger couples,” he emphasizes. “We often carry out tests at the same time and there are patients who are taking Sintrom [un medicamento para prevenir los coágulos] and they come together to do everything at once,” he illustrates. Like the authors of the article published by the American Heart Association, Egocheaga believes that tension control measures, such as reducing salt consumption or exercising, are much more likely to be successful when the couple does them together.
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