Marriage, sex, and brain health

Is being married good for your brain?  Of course, “being married” is a neat phrase for a big variety of same sex and mixed sex, official and unofficial, religious, and secular, coupling of households and life. But some general points can be made from the research.

It’s not surprising that the research has often said that being married is good for the health of a husband. In the traditional role where you share living quarters with someone of the opposite sex who happened to know how to cook and shop and clean and was happy to do all that and more for you, it’s not surprising that this offered some health benefits.  It will be interesting to see if this sort of result continues as time passes and traditional heterosexual patterns of housekeeping and child care evolve.  Comparing the health of married and single women offered interesting results as well in the past. (You can guess.)  However, the question here is whether any of that affects dementia.

The question about marriage is important. Recent studies suggest that being continuously married in middle life confers a lower risk of developing dementia in old age. Divorced and single people had a higher risk in the research. However, if the single people had children, it had a protective value, reducing dementia in that group by 60%. (I couldn’t see if they were mainly female sex because again, in the past, the mother most often took custody of the children after divorce.) Divorced people may have gone through a very stressful episode in their life, and we know that stress is bad for brain health.  But is living your life alone stressful?  Loneliness is a predictor of dementia, but many of my single friends are anything but lonely.  It’s a question of staying active and engaged.

Observational study evidence indicates that greater social participation in midlife and late life is associated with a 30 to 50% lower subsequent dementia risk.  I love getting a chance to explain the difference between association and causation. My favourite is saying that Santa Claus is associated with Christmas, but he doesn’t cause it.  So, the people who are having a great social life may be taking part in things because they have good brain health already.  People who have got dementia oncoming may withdraw from social life.  People with untreated depression may go on to develop dementia but it’s not obvious whether this is causal or if the depression is “prodromal”.  Prodromal symptoms are those that “run ahead or in advance” of an illness.  Maybe the depression is a result of the person’s growing awareness of their brain failing, and a consequent anxiety about mortality and morbidity. It is very difficult to say.

Things that increase the risk of developing dementia include, age, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, being overweight, smoking, alcohol, physical inactivity, depression, and social isolation.  So, if you want to delay progression, stay physically active, eat healthily, stop smoking and drinking alcohol, get check-ups with your doctor, keep up your hobbies and do things that you enjoy, try new ways to keep your mind active, spend time with friends and family and engage in community life. Get your hearing checked and for goodness sake use your hearing aids.

So, in conclusion, research shows that having a happy married life protects people from dementia. Having children definitely keeps your brain active as you try to keep up with them and manage the complexity that they bring to life.  It’s long been known that staying active and engaged is one of the important things that delays symptoms, along with all the usual advice about diet and exercise.  More recently it’s been noted that checking your hearing in later life makes a huge difference. Undertaking art activities like taking part in music, if that’s what you enjoy, seems to make people happy and if it’s a communal art activity, the socialisation has evidence-based benefits.  Not least it’s good for family carers to see someone enjoying themselves, and things come out in conversation that might have been forgotten otherwise. Not surprisingly, much of brain health is all about relationships, talking, telling stories and being together. Enjoy!