HOW YOUR OTHER HALF COULD BE MAKING YOU SICK

THE marriage vows say ‘ in sickness and in health’, but which is more likely if we share our lives with someone? Close proximity may make us more likely to catch colds and flu, but a recent study found co-habitees pass on more useful bugs, too.

Couples soon begin to share some of their microbiome — the colony of 100 trillion microbes that live on the skin, genitals and in the gut.

When scientists from the American Society for Microbiology took skin swabs from 20 people, their analysis correctly identified who lived together by matching types of bacteria found on their skin, particularly the feet.

This overlap could be handy, suggests Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London.

‘The more diverse your microbiome, the healthier you are overall.

‘So the more you mix with others, the higher your chance of picking up valuable microbe strains you might not have.’ But we’re only likely to share around 10 per cent of our microbiome with our nearest and dearest, he adds.

‘ Even identical twins only share 30 to 35 per cent of their microbes,’ he says.

‘The majority are unique to each person. Factors such as diet, shared space and having a family dog will contribute to the mix.

‘We’re not quite sure why, but it may be we get closer to dogs or perhaps that we have more similar microbes so they’re more easily transferred.’

‘And you’re more likely to see similarities on the skin, and the genitals if a couple is regularly intimate, than in the gut.’

SO IF you want to choose a partner to boost your health, avoid hygiene freaks (who might clean away beneficial bugs) and pick someone with a messy house, kids, a pet dog and a decent sex drive.

You could also do worse than choose a slim partner. ‘ Studies have shown if you implant microbes from a thin mouse into the gut of another mouse, they have a protective effect against obesity, even if that mouse is then overfed,’ says Professor Spector.

‘I can’t promise that a thin partner will keep you slim, it’s still speculation, but it could play a part.’

Your partner may also influence your food choices.

A recent Polish study, reported in the journal Appetite, revealed couples who have been married for a long time develop similar preferences in taste and smell.

It’s thought that sharing the same meals over a period of years changes our perception of food and aroma and results in the same likes and dislikes, overriding genetic preference. Long-term partners also tend to develop matching kidney function, grip strength and total cholesterol according to an analysis of blood markers by the University of Michigan, presented last year at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.

‘Scientists call it “interpersonal synchronisation ”— a phenomenon in which you begin to mirror the person you spend time with, on a psychological and physiological level,’ says Andrea Lindsay, a psychotherapist from clickfortherapy.com.

Interpersonal synchronicity could provide a novel way to tackle pain. A 2017 study by the University of Colorado and the University of Haifa in Israel, published in Scientific reports, found that heart rates and breathing synchronise and pain dissipates if a couple touch when one partner is in pain.

‘ The more empathic the partner and the stronger the analgesic effect, the higher the synchronisation between the two when they touch,’ said lead author Pavel Goldstein, a pain researcher at Colorado.

But the effects are not always equal between the sexes. For instance, larger women raise a man’s risk of type 2 diabetes, yet the reverse is not true.

This was the finding from a 17year study by scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark that tracked 3,500 couples over 50. The results, presented at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes last month, revealed that the woman’s weight at the start of the study was a strong predictor for her husband’s chance of developing type 2 diabetes, regardless of his weight.

For every extra five points a wife scored on the BMI scale, the husband was 21 per cent more likely to develop the condition. Yet a husband’s starting weight makes no difference to his wife’s chance of developing the disease.

researchers suggest men are more influenced by their wives’ eating and activity patterns than vice versa, and women in this age group are more likely to cook the family meals. In fact, men’s health seems to benefit from marriage, regardless of whether it makes them happy — a 2016 study by Michigan State University found a nagging wife can have a positive impact on her husband’s health, yet for women, health benefits come only from a happy marriage.