Ask Dr. Mona: Married couple reaps benefits of age gap
“Everyone said it wouldn’t last.”
Yet, 23 years later, Mary and Dan Hirst have defied the prevailing prediction. Their love story isn’t that unusual — they met in graduate school for social work, hung out together, enjoyed each other’s company and then moved in together — until you get to their age difference of 16 years. In fact, Dan, 67, is closer in age to his 83-year-old wife Mary’s oldest daughter — only four years separate them.
Widowed in middle age, Mary Hirst lived a lonely life while dating for five years before she met Dan. “All the men I met were comparing me to their ex-wives,” she said. “It was a real plus” that Dan had never been married.
“When we married in 1994, they all said ‘It doesn’t matter much now, but wait until you’re older, when the aging process kicks in,’” said Dan Hirst. “‘That’s when the age difference will start to show and she will slow you down.’”
But the slowing down never happened. In fact, just the opposite. Together they have made a concerted effort to remain healthy together. That’s not unusual. Recent research from Johns Hopkins University has shown that when a wife began to exercise more, her husband was 70 percent more likely to increase his activity. And when a husband started meeting recommended exercise goals, his wife was 40 percent more likely to join in.
“When I retired from Cal State Long Beach, we attended a Senior Olympics track meet,” Mary Hirst said. “I decided I wanted to train and Dan said ‘Great!’ He went with me to practices and meets for shot put, javelin, discus and 5K runs.”
Now the Palm Desert couple participates in physical activities together. Just last month, they both completed the arduous Tram Road Challenge in Palm Springs. The race is 3.7 miles of a 2,000-foot steep climb.
Mary Hirst admitted she feels the pressure to prove the naysayers wrong and keep up with Dan. She thinks she may be aging slower because she doesn’t have any medical conditions nor take any medications, the same as her husband. At 83, she has escaped the typical diagnoses of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, joint pains, and obesity. She does have occasional memory lapses, but “so does Dan,” she said. “We are aging together.”
Studies have shown that happy marriages have many health benefits. A lower risk of stress, cancer, heart disease, stroke, a longer life expectancy and better overall health are some. We’ll never know with certainty if Mary Hirst’s younger husband has kept her as young in body as she is young at heart. But scientific evidence is on their side. Two recent studies have found striking similarities in longtime couples, including kidney function, cholesterol, grip strength, difficulty performing daily tasks and depression. Findings presented by University of Michigan researchers at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America looked at more than 1,500 older married couples and found that many were in biological sync, based on markers in blood tests. An earlier study by the University of British Columbia and Pennsylvania State University of about 1,700 U.S. couples, married more than 40 years, found that couples begin to mirror each other's emotional and physical health as they age — an indication of how interdependent, emotionally and physically, long-married couples can become.
In fact, Mary and Dan Hirst’s relationship is more normal than not. They bicker but have learned to compromise. “I like Led Zeppelin, and Mary didn’t even allow her daughters to play Led Zeppelin in the house,” Dan said.
“We settled on classical music,” Mary said, laughing.
For more information on how a healthy marriage can improve your overall health and participate in a small exercise, go to: https://healthcare.utah.edu/the-scope/shows.php?shows=0_bm3ouecb.
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Please email comments and your medical questions to AskDrMona@gmail.com. We’ll answer as many as we can in this weekly column. Remember: Your health is your most important asset. Guard it with your life.
Mona Khanna, M.D., is a triple board-certified physician, Emmy Award-winning journalist and humanitarian who proudly calls the Coachella Valley her year-round home.
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