Your Mother-in-Law Really Is Bad For Your Health

By | December 16th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

If you’re one of those people who read that headline and shook your head in denial, good for you. But let me tell you – you just aren’t normal.

Lucky, yes. Normal. . . well, let scientists in Japan be the judge. Because a study by Harvard Medical School researchers showed Japanese women who live with their mothers-in-law are three times more likely to have a heart attack.

Making this study even more significant? Japanese women are traditionally at a much lower risk of cardiac disease than those of us living in the states.

The study followed ninety-one thousand men and women ages forty to sixty-nine over a ten-year period, determining men had little affect on their health when Mom came to live with them while their wives saw a decrease in cardiac health. The women were less likely to drink and smoke (maybe because they had someone breathing down their neck, clucking every time they picked up a wineglass?), but despite not having had any cardiac issues before the study began, six hundred seventy-one participants had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease by the study’s end and three hundred thirty-nine had died of heart disease.

On the positive end for parents, the women who had both a mother-in-law and her own children living at home were actually better off than those whose kids have already flown the coop (it’s like multiple children – more than one person for the old bat to heckle, er, watch over). Rather than tripling her chances of having a heart attack, the woman’s chances were doubled.

So, Dads, it’s up to you – which Mom needs your help?

Image: Amazon

Source: New York Times