February is a great time to ❤️ your heart.
It's no coincidence that our major life-giving organ shares the same anatomically incorrect symbol as our impulse to form meaningful relationships.
Love and friendship - and the support they come with - actually have an impact on heart health.
"Love improves your health because if you have emotional support, you do better physically and mentally, no matter who you love and bring with you through your journey," says Colleen Norris, a leading heart researcher at the University of Alberta.
In celebration of Heart Month, Wear Red Canada Day and Valentine's Day, Folio asked Norris to help us count the ways love improves heart health.
Love means friendship
Norris notes that the person who loves you doesn't have to be your spouse.
"Our results consistently demonstrate that men experience better outcomes when they are married," she points out. "For women, they have better outcomes when they report strong social support from friends or sisters or daughters."
Research by Norris and others shows that health-related quality of life is lower for women than for men one year following treatment for coronary artery disease, and a big factor in that is social isolation. Women with less social support are more prone to depression and less likely to follow their medication and treatment plans. Conversely, social support reduces psychological distress and enhances recovery.
"The evidence says women do better if they have a friend or a daughter or a sister - the person you go to first - and it doesn't have to be their husband," says Norris.
Norris points out that heart disease can even put a strain on a marriage if you only rely on your spouse for support.
"It sure is not going to improve your relationship, because both of you will feel it's unfair - for one of you, it's that you got sick and for the other, it's that you have to turn your life over to taking care of your partner."
For Norris, when she wound up in an emergency department with chest pain last year, one of her go-to people was a friend she's known since Grade 1.
"It's that shared history, that bond we have. She's a person I call if something disastrous happens in my life," Norris explains. "I just say, 'Kath, you'll never believe what happened!' and we can have that conversation without any judgment."
