According to a Danish study, heartbreak and years of celibacy have a greater impact on the health of men than that of women. This conclusion therefore overturns certain received ideas from a medical and more specifically an inflammatory point of view.
Affecting many people, loneliness is an important societal and public health problem . Several studies have in fact claimed that loneliness can weaken the heart and double the risk of cardiovascular disease. However, if certain solutions tend to appear (pet robot, pill, etc.), research is continuing to find out more about this phenomenon.
In a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology &Community Health on January 10, 2022, researchers from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) claim that romantic breakups and loneliness has a greater impact on the health of men than that of women. The work involved 10,000 people who were between 48 and 62 years old. However, the volunteers had experienced at least seven years of loneliness and two breakups.
Remember that the negative effects on mental and physical health of the end of a romantic relationship are already well known by science. This can indeed induce a decrease in immunity and an increase in the risk of mortality in the short term.
As part of their work, the researchers attempted to analyze the effects of the accumulation of breakups and years of celibacy on the immune system. It was also a question of understanding whether other factors such as gender, level of education, BMI, taking medication or even certain personality traits (eg nervousness) weighed in the balance.
The study gathers information about the breakups of 4,612 people (including 1,442 women) and the number of years of loneliness of 4,835 people (including 1,499 women ) over the period 1986-2011. Regarding celibacy, three categories have been defined according to time:less than a year, between two and six years and more than seven years . The first category was considered normal and then referred to. Let's also mention the measurement of the level of inflammation of the volunteers using standard markers such as interleukin 6 and C-reactive protein detected using blood tests.
According to the results, the highest rate of inflammation was observed in subjects who experienced the most love breakups. Their rate was 17% higher than that of the reference group. Moreover, this same rate of inflammation was 12% higher in men having known loneliness for at least seven years. However, the researchers did not find such an association for women.
For the authors of the study, this difference may be explained by the reactions of men after a breakup. They are more likely to externalize their sadness drinking a lot of alcohol or engaging in other risky behaviors. Women, for their part, are more subject to phenomena related to internalization, such as depression, and in both cases, the inflammatory response differs.
