Dementia Is More Common Among the Married Than the Unmarried
www.psychologytoday.com
An 18-year study of 24,000 older adults found that unmarried people were less at risk for dementia, challenging the belief that married people are healthier.

cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5558928

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/science by /u/mvea on 2025-04-03 10:04:48+00:00.

Original Title: Study found that people who were not married were less at risk (at least 50% lower risk) than married people for dementia. One contributing factor may be that single people are better at maintaining social ties. Single people may also have a greater variety of interesting and unique experiences.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    211·
    1 day ago

    The people who had always been single (never married) had the lowest risk of all, though the difference between them and the other unmarried groups was not statistically significant.

    Selection bias…

    A frightening amount of people get married because they’re worried about having someone to take care of them at an elderly age. Even if their goal is recipical, for a lot of people that’s a big driver for marriage.

    People who are more self sufficient and with a strong family health history doesn’t have that drive.

    Couple that with not being able to “offload” tasks to a spouse and you end up with single people staying active mentally which is one of the biggest negative correlations to Alzheimer’s.