婚姻与心脏健康的关系【阅读听力】

Marriage and Heart Health

Plenty of studies have found that being married is generally good for health. One study zeroes in more closely, showing that marriage not only benefits well-being in a general way but also lowers your risk for developing heart problems.

Love & Marriage

Not all marriages, however, are good for the heart. A bad marriage that causes lots of stress and heartache—no pun intended—is obviously not good for physical or mental wellbeing.

But, on average, being married is better for you than being single. Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center looked at data collected from more than 3.5 million Americans and came up with some interesting findings.

They found that married couples are 5 percent less likely to have cardiovascular disease than people who are single. People who are widowed have a 3 percent greater risk of having heart disease, and people who’ve been divorced have a 5 percent greater risk. Marriage appears to especially benefit people less than 50, who, according to the study, have a 12 percent lower risk of heart disease than single people in their age range.

Healthy Relationships

So why is marriage so beneficial? The study doesn’t provide a definitive answer, but it may be because being married or in a committed relationship means having a spouse or partner who encourages healthful habits.

In fact, the study found that bad habits such as smoking—which raises the risk for heart disease—was highest among divorced people. And obesity, another common factor in heart disease, was also most common among divorced and single people.

So being married may not guarantee good health, but it may tip the odds in your favor.

译文：

婚姻与心脏健康的关系

大量的研究表明结婚通常有益健康。一项更精细的研究指出，结婚不仅仅能够带来一般意义上的幸福快乐，而且能降低弭患心脏病的风险。

爱与婚姻

然而，并不是所有的婚姻都有益心脏。一段失败的婚姻能带来巨大的压力和心痛（这不是在含沙射影），这明显不利于身心健康。

但通常来说，结婚比单身更好。来自纽约大学兰贡医学中心的研究人员分析了收集到的超过350万个美国人的数据后找到了一些有趣的发现。

他们发现和单身人群相比已婚夫妻患心血管疾病的可能性低5%。丧偶的人患心脏病的风险增加3%，而离婚的人则增加5%。结婚似乎对50岁以下的人特别有益，根据研究表明，在他们的年龄范围内，已婚人群比单身人群患心脏病的风险低12%。

健康的关系

那为什么结婚会带来这些好处呢？研究并没有提供一个明确的答案，但或许是因为婚姻或者一段忠诚的关系意味着伴侣或搭档有鼓励的良好习惯。

事实上，研究发现像吸烟（能增加患心脏病的风险）这样的坏习惯在离婚的人群中最高。引发心脏病的另外一个因素——肥胖同样也常见于离异和单身人群中。

所以结婚并不能保证身体健康，但它或许能增加你获益的可能。