Research: Secret to Longevity, Good Health May be Your Partner

Having your partner workout with you can help you stay in better health, a new study finds.

According to CNN, the benefits of working out with a spouse or a partner are accrued fairly equally by both men and women. The study conducted by University College London researchers found that even older couples aged over 60 benefited from working out together or striving to quit smoking. This surprised researchers as they expected to learn that decades of cohabitation can make cooperation difficult.

"Men and women are more likely to make a positive health behavior change if their partner does too, and with a stronger effect than if the partner had been consistently healthy in that domain. Involving partners in behavior change interventions may therefore help improve outcomes," researchers wrote in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

The data for the new study was obtained from the English Longitudinal Study of ageing which looked at 3,722 couples older than 50 years, The Washington Post reported. University College London professor and the recent study's co-author Jane Wardle found that 48 percent of men quit smoking because their spouses decided to give up as against just 8% as their partners did not quit smoking. Nearly half the women in the study had given up smoking because their partners did.

Physical activity and weight control information from the study also showed that couples performed well when they worked together.

Twenty six percent men and 36 % women lost weight thanks to their partners' commitment as against 10 % men and 15 % women who had to sweat it by themselves.