As if parents who divorce don't feel guilty enough, now comes the news from researchers that your kids are more than twice as likely to suffer a stroke at some point during their lives compared to kids whose parents stay married.
The link between divorce and stroke for offspring held even though researchers accounted for other known stroke risk factors -- obesity, smoking and diabetes.
SURVEY OF 13,000
The findings are based on a survey of more than 13,000 Canadians, participants in the 2005 Canadian Health Survey. The study results were presented last week, Nov. 22, at the meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in New Orleans.
Hopefully, the new research will shed light on the impact such events, along with the stress of childhood, have on adult health, said study researcher Dr. Esme Fuller-Thomson (pictured below right), a professor and Sandra Rotman Chair on the faculties of social work, medicine and nursing at the University of Toronto.
CHILDREN OF DIVORCE NOT CONDEMNED TO HAVE STROKES
"I certainly don't want this to be taken to mean that children from divorced households are condemned to have strokes," said Fuller-Thomson," reports Alan Mozes, HealthDay reporter.
"This is just one factor among many that may increase stroke risk. And we don't know that it's causal, in the sense that divorce leads to a stroke. It could be that many other things are at work here that are related to divorce, but are not divorce itself."
POVERTY AND CHILDHOOD STRESS FACTORS
Several ways in which divorce and stroke risk could be linked, she said, include poverty and childhood stress.
Children whose parents divorce are more likely to grow up in poverty than children of intact families, and childhood poverty is a risk factor for numerous adult health problems.
Additionally, childhood stress may also link the two. Earlier work on childhood poverty and abuse suggest severe and chronic stress in childhood can alter the development of the body's regulation of the stress hormone cortisol (present in the fight-or-flight mechanism), making people vulnerable to a wide range of diseases over time, said Fuller-Thomson.
CORRELATIONAL NOT CAUSAL FINDINGS
The researcher repeatedly emphasized that the study showed an association between divorce and stroke (correlation), not that divorce causes strokes (cause and effect).
The research team looked into a wide range of potentially influential factors, according to HealthDay, including age, race, gender, socioeconomic background, educational background, adult mental health history, childhood physical abuse history, long-term parental unemployment, lifestyle issues (like smoking and drinking) and diabetes history.
Still, they determined that none of the above variables explained the finding that children of divorce apparently bear approximately 2.2 times higher risk for lifetime stroke.
by Sharon McEachern
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