Can love affect your health?
Research has found that couples in good relationships tend to be healthier and happier. "Happily married couples report lower stress than single people, in part because they provide each other with emotional support in difficult times," says Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University, in Columbus. "Lower stress translates into better health and immune function." For example, people who are in conflict-ridden relationships might see cuts and bruises heal more slowly--by as much as 40 percent, according to a 2005 experiment at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. And breakups have been shown to cause physical pain. A 2003 study looked at people playing a virtual ball-tossing game. Those people rejected during the game showed activity in the pain area of their brains. "In evolutionary terms, exclusion can be as bad for survival as a real injury, and our bodies automatically know this," explains the study's author, Naomi Eisenberger, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.
