While You Are Sleeping: Marital Ambivalence and Blunted Nocturnal Blood Pressure

Wendy C. Birmingham (), Raphael M. Herr, Mikel Cressman, Neha Patel and Man Hung
Additional contact information
Wendy C. Birmingham: Psychology Department, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Raphael M. Herr: Department of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), 91054 Erlangen, Germany
Mikel Cressman: Psychology Department, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA
Neha Patel: College of Dental Medicine, Roseman University of Health Sciences, South Jordan, UT 84095, USA
Man Hung: College of Dental Medicine, Roseman University of Health Sciences, South Jordan, UT 84095, USA

IJERPH, 2024, vol. 21, issue 6, 1-14

Abstract: Marital relationships offer health benefits, including a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, quality of the relationship matters; ambivalent behaviors may increase CVD risk by affecting blunted nocturnal blood pressure (BP) dipping. This study tracked daytime and nocturnal SBP and DBP in 180 normotensive individuals (90 couples; participant mean age 25.04; 91.58% white) over a 24 h period using ambulatory blood pressure monitors to explore the impact of martial quality. Results showed that perceptions of spousal ambivalence were associated with blunted nocturnal BP dipping. Perceptions of one’s own behavior as ambivalent also showed blunted nocturnal dipping. When in an ambivalent relationship, a gender interaction was found such that women were most likely to have blunted SBP dipping, but men were more likely to have blunted nocturnal DBP dipping. Overall, this study found an association between ambivalence and BP dipping, thus uncovering one virtually unexplored pathway by which marital relationships may have adverse effects on health.

Keywords: relationship quality; nocturnal dipping; blood pressure; ambivalence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/6/723/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/6/723/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:21:y:2024:i:6:p:723-:d:1406879

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().