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Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners

Satisfying marriages pose benefits and possible risks to health. Indeed, high-quality relationships boost emotional resources and encourage healthy behaviors. However, stress and its adverse health effects also spread more easily in close relationships. To examine the relevance of joint health behav...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wilson, Stephanie, Novak, Joshua
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7742522/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1944
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author Wilson, Stephanie
Novak, Joshua
author_facet Wilson, Stephanie
Novak, Joshua
author_sort Wilson, Stephanie
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description Satisfying marriages pose benefits and possible risks to health. Indeed, high-quality relationships boost emotional resources and encourage healthy behaviors. However, stress and its adverse health effects also spread more easily in close relationships. To examine the relevance of joint health behaviors for health indicators and partners’ health similarity, 227 couples age 23-84 reported their frequency of co-sleeping, exercising together, and sharing meals; relationship satisfaction; health satisfaction; recent medical visits; and health problems. Happier couples shared more joint health behaviors than unhappier counterparts. In turn, joint health behaviors predicted greater health satisfaction and more similar rates of health problems between partners. In particular, exercising together predicted greater health satisfaction, fewer health problems, and greater health similarity. Controlling for diet, sedentariness, and sleep, findings revealed that joint health behaviors—a characteristic of happy relationships—are linked to not only better health and greater health satisfaction, but also greater health similarity between partners.
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spelling pubmed-77425222020-12-21 Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners Wilson, Stephanie Novak, Joshua Innov Aging Abstracts Satisfying marriages pose benefits and possible risks to health. Indeed, high-quality relationships boost emotional resources and encourage healthy behaviors. However, stress and its adverse health effects also spread more easily in close relationships. To examine the relevance of joint health behaviors for health indicators and partners’ health similarity, 227 couples age 23-84 reported their frequency of co-sleeping, exercising together, and sharing meals; relationship satisfaction; health satisfaction; recent medical visits; and health problems. Happier couples shared more joint health behaviors than unhappier counterparts. In turn, joint health behaviors predicted greater health satisfaction and more similar rates of health problems between partners. In particular, exercising together predicted greater health satisfaction, fewer health problems, and greater health similarity. Controlling for diet, sedentariness, and sleep, findings revealed that joint health behaviors—a characteristic of happy relationships—are linked to not only better health and greater health satisfaction, but also greater health similarity between partners. Oxford University Press 2020-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7742522/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1944 Text en © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
Wilson, Stephanie
Novak, Joshua
Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners
title Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners
title_full Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners
title_fullStr Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners
title_full_unstemmed Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners
title_short Couples' Joint Health Behaviors Predict Better Health and Stronger Resemblance Between Partners
title_sort couples' joint health behaviors predict better health and stronger resemblance between partners
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7742522/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1944
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