People in stressful jobs show a rise in their average blood pressure over one year if they have a poor relationship with their spouse, a new study shows. Conversely, people experiencing job strain who have good marital relationships saw their blood pressure fall by the same amount.
"People with both high job strain and low marital cohesion may benefit from having their blood pressure regularly assessed," Dr Sheldon W. Tobe and colleagues from the University of Toronto write in the American Journal of Hypertension.
Tobe and his team conducted the study to examine whether job factors and marriage quality - both of which have been shown, separately, to influence health - might interact to affect blood pressure.