Credits: Social Media
Couples that drink together live together longer, new study reveals
Were often told that drinking alcohol is an unhealthy habit but the findings of a new study buck that trend as it surprisingly revealed that couples who drink together tend to live longer.
Conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, the study was aimed at testing a theory known as the drinking partnership which hypothesized that couples who have similar patterns of alcohol consumption tend to have better marital outcomes such as less conflict and longer marriages.
Study reveals that couples who drink together live longer
In order to test their theory, researchers examined the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative sample of people over the age of 50 in the United States, where participants are required to complete surveys every two years.
Using the HRS, researchers were able to study the habits of 4,656 different-sex couples, either married or cohabiting, (making a total of 9,312 individuals) over a 20-year period from 1996 to 2016.
Incredibly, however, the researchers discovered that couples with concordant (similar) drinking patterns lived longer than those with discordant drinking patterns (where one partner would drink and the other wouldnt) and even couples who concordantly abstained from drinking altogether.
But while this may seem like a recommendation to crack open a bottle of wine with your partner, the lead author of the study, Kira Birditt of the University of Michigans Institute for Social Research, warned against that interpretation as the studys definition of drinking was very broad as participants were simply asked if they had consumed any alcohol within the last three months.
- FINGER BREATHING: Sleep expert gives seal of approval to technique to help you drift off
Further research is needed
Birditt said that further research was needed, suggesting that the results of the study may be linked with couples having a more harmonious relationship, thereby positively impacting each others health.
“We don’t know why both partners drinking is associated with better survival, Birditt said. I think using the other techniques that we use in our studies in terms of the daily experiences and ecological momentary assessment questionnaires could really get at that to understand, for example, focusing on concordant drinking couples”
“What are their daily lives like? Are they drinking together? What are they doing when they are drinking? she asked.
There is also little information about the daily interpersonal processes that account for these links, Birditt added. Future research should assess the implications of couple drinking patterns for daily marital quality, and daily physical health outcomes.”
