Call me old fashion, or maybe call me objective, but this article found it’s way to me via twitter today, and I think Reuters is paying a real disservice to their readership with this article.
If you just read the title, you may think: “oh yeah, that makes sense, take yourself off the market, and of course you are going to let yourself go.” Read a little into the article though, and you can see that this is pretty far from the truth. Limited sampling, “slight” differences, and no statistics referenced, make this a non-story. Or, perhaps the title should have been “Married or Single, it May Not Matter for Your Physical Fitness.”
Is marriage bad for your physical fitness?
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People who stay single, or become single again by divorce, may be somewhat more physically fit than those in wedded bliss, a new study suggests.
The findings, reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, do not prove that a change in marital status directly causes the change in fitness — for better or worse.
In this study, changes in marital status were related to only small changes in fitness, lead researcher Dr. Francisco B. Ortega, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.
When it came to marital status, the researchers found, women who remained single during the study period showed a small increase in their fitness levels over time. That gain was not seen among women who got married.
For their part, men who married showed a decline in fitness — but so did those who stayed single, though theirs was a smaller loss. For men, the differences were more apparent when the researchers looked at divorce and re-marriage.
Men who got divorced during the study showed a gain in fitness levels, while those who remained married saw no change. Meanwhile, men who were divorced at the outset showed a general decline in fitness over time — but the drop was steepest among those who got re-married.
Marriage and Staying Fit – Are You Better Off Single? Maybe Not! http://bit.ly/dZcJao
Marriage and Staying Fit – Are You Better Off Single? Maybe Not …: Call me old fashion, or maybe call me objec… http://bit.ly/eN8jjw