Married couples tend to mirror each other’s immune systems, according to new research, confirming that marriage is beautiful.
The goal, as Science of Us reports, was “to see how their immune systems responded to the environment.”
One of the patterns that emerged was the fact that the couples in the study showed very similar immune systems. When the researchers compared the immune system of one person against his or her partner, they found about 50 percent less variation than when they compared a couple of random strangers against one another.
The characteristics of any one person’s immune system is based on a range of factors, including diet, workout regimen and disease history. It seems, at least according to this study, that your antibodies may change over time based on your partner’s habits, and vice versa:
This suggests that something is happening when you and your lovebird decide to take the jump and move in together. The lead author told Quartz that while the study didn’t look at unmarried couples, he thinks that they’d probably also be immune-system twinsies. (In a future study, for that matter, researchers want to compare the immunology of couples before and after they begin living together.)
This means, I think, that in the event of a deadly global epidemic you’ll likely both perish around the same time.
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Image via AP
