They say behind every successful man, is a woman. Now we know that behind every long living man is a smart woman. Research shows that an intelligent wife can help a man live a longer, happier life and even ward off dementia. The battle of the sexes just got a whole lot more interesting!
Smarter Wife, Longer Life
Attention men: don’t worry so much about beauty, the brains are where it’s at. A study conducted at the College of Medicine and Life Sciences at the University of Aberdeen examined the health of identical male twins who were both married.
What they found was the ones with a smarter partner had lower instances of degenerative diseases like dementia or Alzheimer’s. They also found them to live longer and appear happier, which makes it a little harder to make a stereotypical marriage joke.
It’s been found that intellectually stimulating games like crossword puzzles can help stave off dementia. So a wife who engages her husband and challenges him mentally every day makes sense to be beneficial.
Perhaps the craziest part was that some of the men even had physical signs of dementia but none of the symptoms! This was due to factors of their environment which included things like education, social class, social status, income and, you guessed it, their partner.
Professor Lawrence Whalley gave a speech titled Dementia: How Can we Protect Ourselves? that highlighted these factors and added “the thing a boy is never told he needs to do if he wants to live a longer life – but what he should do – is marry an intelligent woman. There is no better buffer than intelligence”.
Other Factors
The men who showed signs of physical dementia were mostly shown to have high powered jobs, high income and high intelligence. Another study showed that the partner’s social position has an effect on their spouse’s mortality; such as women’s education and men’s social class being the most important.
Even going all the way back to childhood can affect the person as a whole. Girls who were proud of their intelligence at a young age grew up to be more responsible and independent. Boys who had this trait developed healthier relationships with women and had a nicer family atmosphere.
While it might be fun to joke that married life is a struggle or it sucks the life out of you, the reality is far from it. Intelligence is a valued commodity these days, so don’t let it go to waste!