Couples have an Easier time Getting Healthy, Study Reports

People are more likely to adopt a healthier lifestyle if they do it with their significant others, a new study reported. According to the researchers, married couples are more likely to quit smoking and start exercising than single people.

"I would speculate that social support and sharing the problem would be good," researcher Jane Wardle from the University College London said to Reuters Health. "Maybe there might also be an element of competition."

For this study, the researchers distributed health behavior questionnaires to 3,722 couples that were married or living together. The couples were a part of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and had received the questionnaire back in around year 2000. Since then, the team has been following up on the participants with more questionnaires and nurse visits.

The researchers found that in smoking couples, eight percent of men who had partners that kept smoking were able to quit the habit successfully. A total of 48 percent of men were able to quit successfully when their partners joined them. The researchers noted that the numbers were similar for female smokers as well.

In terms of exercise, the team found that 26 percent of men were able to increase their physical activity levels on their own. When men were accompanied by their partners, a total of nearly 70 percent of men were able to successfully increase their physical activity levels.

For weight loss, the researchers found that 15 percent of women were able to lose at least five percent of their body weight on their own while their partners did not lose weight at all. When the women's partners also lost weight, a total of 36 percent of the women had shed at least five percent of their body weight as well.

Overall, the team found that couples that were not similar were more likely to adopt a healthier lifestyle. For example, a couple made up of one smoker and one nonsmoker was more likely to quit successfully.

"The partner merely being slim didn't seem to promote change. Perhaps couples can more easily ignore [or accept] differences in weight without feeling any pressure to change; perhaps weight differences aren't as readily expressed as visible differences in food intake," Wardle said. "In contrast, if your husband is a non-smoker [for example] he probably expresses his preference that you don't smoke, and if he goes exercising he might encourage you to come too."

She concluded, "I would certainly recommend doctors to enquire if their patient's partner ought to be quitting smoking, getting more active, or losing some weight, and if so talk to the patient about whether the two of them might take the change up together."

The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.