Hot MedFax

Who doesn't want her partner to say, "Hey, you look great in those jeans (and no, they don't make you look fat)"? Well, a new study is saying that the compliment could actually have negative physiological consequences . A team of researchers from Binghamton University recruited 65 married couples and had them engage in two interactions in which each spouse selected a discussion topic about a stressor external to their marriage (e.g. poor physical fitness, the desire to get a new job). Before and after the interactions, spouses separately completed questions about their expectations and appraisals of their partner’s responsiveness during the discussion, according to newswise.com. The researchers took saliva samples from each spouse and measured for cortisol—a hormone that helps regulate stress in the body—at the beginning of the study and after each discussion. The most consistent finding was that observable behaviors when support was given and received...

We're screwed. A new study says says good communication does not lead to marital satisfaction. Say what? It's not quite so grim.  What the study found was that it takes more than good communication (duh) to make a marriage successful.  "Although communication and satisfaction were correlated, communication wasn’t a good guide for determining partners’ satisfaction with their relationships over time,” says the study’s lead author Justin Lavner, an assistant professor in UGA’s clinical psychology program in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Although communication practices could predict satisfaction to some extent for some couples, the lack of a definitive causal relationship calls for additional attention to other factors that influence marital satisfaction, such as environmental stressors, what activities and interactions a couple has, and the personality traits of the individual partners. "It’s absolutely right to say more satisfied c...

This fall, a friend's husband died of cancer after being diagnosed four months earlier.  Even though the end came so quickly, they were able to plan for a peaceful death at home, surrounded by loved ones. Now a new study says you will die as you live, but for surviving spouses, you will live as your partner died. Say what? A person's quality of life at the time of their death continues to influence his or her spouse's quality of life in the years following the person's passing, according to new research by University of Arizona psychologists, reports newswise.com. What's more, the association between a deceased and surviving spouse is just as strong as the association between partners who are both living, the researchers found. I'm sure my friend finds herself just as married to her spouse now as she was before his death. "If your partner has higher quality of life before they pass away, you're more likely to have higher quality of l...

Now this is a surprise (at least, to me). You're more likely to cheat if you're economically dependent on your spouse. Hmm, when I was, I was terrified to do anything that put me at risk.  Having no income, and nowhere to go, with a small son, when things got shaky I just had to hold on. Now a new study is saying that, in an average year, there is about a 5 percent chance that women who are completely economically dependent on their husbands will cheat, whereas there is about a 15 percent chance that men who are entirely economically dependent on their wives will have an affair. OK, I can see the male point (feeling less manly, maybe).  But women?  “You would think that people would not want to ‘bite the hand that feeds them’ so to speak, but that is not what my research shows,” says study author Christin L. Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, at newswise.com. “Instead, the findings indicate people like feeling relative...

Uh oh.  A new study has found people are hard-wired to fall out of love and move into new romantic relationships. “Our review of the literature suggests we have a mechanism in our brains designed by natural selection to pull us through a very tumultuous time in our lives,” says Brian Boutwell, Ph.D., associate professor of criminology and criminal justice and associate professor of epidemiology at Saint Louis University. “It suggests people will recover; the pain will go away with time. There will be a light at the end of the tunnel.” As anyone who has endured a break-up knows, some break-ups take more time than others.  I didn't have a lot of serious relationships in my life (I met my husband in my late 20's), but they didn't all end the way I wanted and some of them certainly required much more time to recover (I remember, after one break-up, going running and as I circled the gym, realizing, well, I got through one minute.) Drawing largely upon the field of ...

Why does this not surprise me?  Apparently six percent of marriages end in divorce when the wife gets sick. We're not talking tonsillitis or the flu, but major, serious  illness, like heart attack or cancer. I should know.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years ago, and though my husband went with me to the appointment where we discussed treatment, all I remember is him saying, "This is nothing," as we walked through the parking lot to Tully. Of course, as the surgeon talked on, telling us that though my cancer was non-invasive, it was the highest grade, which meant they weren't totally sure it hadn't spread outside the milk duct, he kept looking at me.  (Thankfully, it turned out not to.)  Walking out of the office, Larry said, "You were right.  It's something." I don't remember much about that time.  We had a three-year-old and I was more concerned about taking care of him (and making sure he didn't notice anything was wrong) ...

Wouldn't you just know? When women are scarce , men will do just anything to get one.  That's according to a new study of, of all things, the Makushi people in Guyana, which showed that men are more likely to seek long-term relationships when women are in short supply, as reported by newswise.com. In my experience, it's the woman who's always looking for the commitment, while the man, looking over his shoulder to make sure he hasn't missed someone cuter. “Commitment to a relationship is influenced by the availability of partners. So we can think of the number of men and women in a population as a potential mating market where the principles of supply and demand hold sway,” says University of Utah anthropologist Ryan Schacht, first author of the study published online Wednesday, Jan. 14 in the journal Royal Society Open Science .  I suppose that's true.  I haven't been on the dating scene for quite a while but I seem to remember that the more la...

My husband watches Fox News.  He loves Bill O'Reilly.  Mike Huckabee, too.  He's against allowing immigrants to remain in this country.  And he's not too crazy about the Affordable Care Act, or President Obama. We don't see eye-to-eye on anything. So how are we still together?  I like him. I wouldn't have said that  half our relationship ago.  In the beginning, there were many years when it was a competition.   Who could win first? But then, life intervened.  We had a child, I got cancer, our mothers both developed serious illnesses and died.  And suddenly winning didn't seem the point anymore. Of course, everything isn't perfect.  He still makes me furious, pretending he doesn't hear me when I ask him to take out the garbage or vacuum the family room floor.  He still comes home and drops his coat on the floor (as does our son now, too). And his idea of a birthday gift (even a big one) is well, a card, if I'...

I admit, this distressed me. Adolescents who attend religious services with one or both of their parents are more likely to feel greater well-being, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. Ours does not. Now,our son, who is 13, might have a better excuse than most.  His father is Jewish, his mother, Christian, and though he was bar-mitzvahed, he also celebrates Christmas (Christmas Eve in church) and Easter.  My rules.  (He was also baptized, but my husband doesn't really know what that means.  Just blame it on my Catholic cousins who taught me that those babies who aren't, and die, go to Purgatory, and even though it's undoubtedly untrue, I wasn't taking any chances). The study looked at how spiritual beliefs or behaviors have appeared to strengthen generally happy marriages and how a person’s religious and/or spiritual functioning may influence that of his or her family members. Sadly, once kids have their bar mitzvah...

We had 10 people at our wedding. Now a new study says the more people who witness your union, the better your chances for a happy marriage. Uh oh. (Disclaimer: we've been married 20 years.) The study found that the more people who attend your wedding to share in the launch of your marriage, the better the chances you will be happily married years down the road. And, somewhat counter-intuitively, the more relationships you had prior to your marriage, the less likely you are to report a high-quality marriage, according to newswise.com.  "The study challenges the idea that 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas' – the general notion that what happens in one’s younger years, before marriage, stays there and doesn’t impact the remainder of one’s life," newswise reports. How people conduct their romantic lives before they tie the knot is linked to their odds of having happy marriages, the study’s authors argue. Past experiences, especially when it co...

Big surprise.  Being married can make you more likely to get depressed . All I wanted, when I met my husband, was to get married.  (It only took 10 years.)  But once we were, I didn't like it quite as much.  For one thing, I now had a mother-in-law.  And for another, it seemed so, well, permanent. I can remember driving home from work one day and thinking, well, I've made it through a month. A new study has found that m arital stress may make people more vulnerable to depression, according to a recent study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and their colleagues, newswise.com reports. I suppose it's a no-brainer but people who experience chronic marital stress are less able to savor positive experiences, a hallmark of depression, the Web sie notes. They are also more likely to report other depressive symptoms. “This is not an obvious consequence, if you will, of marital stress, but it’s one I think is extraordinarily important because of the...

All of you guys out there on the fence -- get married.  I know, I know, I'm with a man who waited 10-and-a- half years to do it.  But if you believe all the studies, you'll live longer.  And now you're less likely to get cardiac disease (I guess that makes sense) as well. According to newswise.com, " Analysis of surveys of more than 3.5 million American men and women, administered at some 20,000 health centers across the country — believed to be the largest analysis of its kind ever performed — found that married people, regardless of age, sex, or even cardiovascular risk factors, had significantly less chances of having any kind of cardiovascular disease than those who were single, divorced or widowed." The study went even further.  newswise.com reports it found:  Being married carried a 5 percent lower risk of having any cardiovascular disease than being single   Widowed and divorced people were, respectively, 3 percent and 5 percent, more ...

Want to hear something truly depressing?  Most of us have made our best memories by age 25. According to a new study, " By the time most people are 25, they have made the most important memories of their lives, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire." Newswise.com reports that r esearchers have found that when older adults were asked to tell their life stories, "They overwhelmingly highlighted the central influence of life transitions in their memories. Many of these transitions, such as marriage and having children, occurred early in life." (Of course, not in my case, when I had my son at 47!). “When people look back over their lives and recount their most important memories, most divide their life stories into chapters defined by important moments that are universal for many: a physical move, attending college, a first job, marriage, military experience, and having children,” said Kristina Steiner, a doctoral student in psychology ...

I suppose I should have known  from the start when he signed my first birthday card, "from, me." Alas, my husband is just not the romantic type.  No champagne and red carpet of roses on our anniversary (and our 20th comes up in March!).  No trip to Kauai  on my 60th (which also comes up this year).  His idea of a romantic evening is lobster -- in front of the TV. So that's why I consider myself one of those living in a marriage of "resigned acceptance."  According to Daniel Jones, who edits the "Modern Love" column every Sunday in The New York Times, we're probably the happiest of the married. Say what?  His point is that most of us see the passion sputter out of long-term marriages and what is left is often either resentment or this acceptance of how things are and just being grateful for it.  As he puts it, with his headline, "When Good Enough is Great." Now I'll admit I hoped through the actual 30-plus years we've been...

Men, what's being 25 and married good for?  Not that!  It's your bones .  Scientists have found that one-two punch strengthens your skeleton. According to newswise.com,  researchers found evidence in a recent study that men who married when they were younger than 25 had lower bone strength than men who married for the first time at a later age. In addition, "Men in stable marriages or marriage-like relationships who had never previously divorced or separated had greater bone strength than men whose previous marriages had fractured, the researchers said. And those in stable relationships also had stronger bones than men who never married." So does this mean you're doomed to dented bone if you don't have a partner in life?  That, researchers don't seem to know, or why being hooked-up is so important to your health.  But t he associations between marriage and bone health were evident in the spine, and alas, not the hip, possibly due to differences in ...

I saw him across a crowded room and I thought, he's cute.  So I smiled at him and I guess the rest is history, because we've been married for 20 years (and together for 30). A new study is making a compelling case for knowing instinctively, immediately, whether you're headed for wedded bliss, or a marriage on the rocks. Though many are not aware of it, according to newswise.com, ". . .people’s automatic evaluations of their partners predict one of the most important outcomes of their lives — the trajectory of their marital satisfaction,” researchers wrote in a paper published in the Nov. 29 issue of the journal Science . The study found that "people’s conscious attitudes, or how they said they felt, did not always reflect their gut-level or automatic feelings about their marriage."  More important -- at least to me -- was the second finding. "It was the gut-level feelings, not their conscious ones, that actually predicted how happy they remained o...

Sounds a little too hokey to be true but a recent study of 700,000 people with the most deadly forms of cancer in the U.S. has found that "patients who were married were more likely to detect their disease early, receive potentially curable treatments and live longer," according to cnn.com. Even more unbelievable -- researchers found that those who were married were 20% less likely to die than those who weren't -- almost more than the benefit chemotherapy provides, cnn.com reports. “It is pretty astonishing,” cnn.com quotes Dr. Paul Nguyen, the study’s senior author. “There’s something about the social support that you get within a marriage that leads to better survival.” Now before you think of rushing off to the altar just in case, study results "did not show that marriage directly causes better survival among cancer patients." The study simply examined associations between marital status and cancer outcomes. It's probably not too hard to figure...

I found this pretty discouraging.   A new study has found that almost three-quarters of us did not marry "the one."  I can safely say that I did -- though, over the years, he's gone from the one to the zero (just kidding, sort of).  Like any marriage, we've had our ups and downs but the tall, skinny guy in the blue jeans I smiled at across a crowded room 30 years ago has morphed into the cranky, sleep-deprived man who refused to help me load a nice wooden bureau by the side of the road, clearly there for the taking, for our son's room, into my car, because he was too embarrassed.  We were out on our nightly walk (something new we now do because our 12-year-old wants nothing to do with us).  And when I went back with my son to get it, who's coming down the road but my husband in his car, asking, "Do you need help?" We wound up not taking the thing (Phillip didn't like it), but the friend I'd stopped to talk to on the way home said, "...