5 ADVERSE EFFECTS OF A PARTNER ON YOUR HEALTH

Adverse effects of a partner on health

1)Intensify pain
In contrast to the research that showed a partner's touch decreases pain, a study by King's College London in the U.K. found that being in the company of your partner could make pain worse.
The researchers found that the more avoidant of closeness women were in their relationships, the more pain they experienced when given a laser pulse
on their finger.
Research led by the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. also found a connection between partners and pain. The team found that partners of individuals with depression have an increased risk of experiencing chronic pain.
The researchers' analysis showed that depression and chronic pain share common causes. Some of these causes are genetic while others stem from the environment shared by the partners.

2)Derail your diet
Dieting with your partner could end up derailing your weight loss plans.Dieting with your partner may seem to be a good idea, but research has indicated that among romantic couples, the more successful one partner is at restricting their diet and eating more healthfully, the less confident the other partner becomes at controlling their food portions.
"When people strive to reach a goal, being close (in this case, romantically)with someone who is successfully reaching the same goal can make the other partner less confident in their own efforts to reach the goal," explains Jennifer Jill Harman, an associate professor at Colorado State University in
Fort Collins.

3)Facilitate weight gain
Marriage has been positively correlated with weight gain among couples. For example, lead researcher Andrea L. Meltzer - an assistant professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX - and collaborators unveiled that newlyweds who are satisfied with their marriage are more likely to gain
weight in the early years of marriage than those who are unsatisfied.
"On average, spouses who were more satisfied with their marriage were less likely to consider leaving their marriage, and they gained more weight over time," states Prof. Meltzer. "In contrast, couples who were less satisfied in their relationship tended to gain less weight over time." Other research by the University of Bath's School of Management in the U.K.showed that marriage makes men gain weight, and that fatherhood exacerbates the problem further.

4)Increase risk of health conditions
In contrast with research signaling that your significant other can decrease your risk of certain health conditions, other studies show the reverse. For example, the McGill University Health Centre in Canada has suggested that if someone has type 2 diabetes , their partner has a 26 percent increased risk of also developing the condition. While spouses are not related biologically, they share the same environment, social habits, and eating and exercising patterns all of which are factors
that alter the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
"When we talk about family history of type 2 diabetes, we generally assume that the risk increase that clusters in families results from genetic factors. What our analyses demonstrate is that risk is shared by spouses," says senior study author Kaberi Dasgupta, of the Research Institute at McGill University.

5)Giving your spouse the silent treatment increases your risk of back pain and stiff muscles.
Furthermore, the way that you react to disagreements and argue with your partner could predict health problems later in life. The University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, revealed that fits of rage during marital spats can predict cardiovascular problems, and shutting down and giving the silent treatment raises the risk of a bad back or stiff muscles.
"Conflict happens in every marriage, but people deal with it in different ways.
Some of us explode with anger; some of us shut down," says lead study author Claudia Haase, an assistant professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University. "Our study shows that these different emotional behaviors can predict the development of different health problems in the long run."
Research has also indicated that individuals may unintentionally worsen their partner's insomnia. Moreover, other research found that inflammation markers rise in tired partners who argue.
Additionally, in older adults, researchers learned that the frailer an individual a condition that affects around 10 percent of those aged 65 and over the more likely it is that they will become depressed. Equally, the more depressed an older person is, the frailer they will become.
What is more, people married to frail spouses had an increased risk of becoming frail themselves, and those married to a depressed partner were also more likely to become depressed.
And interestingly, health changes influenced by a romantic partner do not necessarily end when they pass away.
Kyle Bourassa, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues found that couples' qualities of life are linked even when one partner dies.