Going through a divorce must be one of the most difficult things life could throw at you.
If losing your life partner wasn’t enough, and in some cases the custody of your children and possessions, it also drastically ages you, according to research.
Dr Bahman Guyuron conducted a study to see whether your marital status impacts the way you look. In order to do so he and his team analyzed identical twins who were married and compared them to their brother or sister who was either married or single.
“The purpose of this study was to identify the environmental factors that contribute to facial aging in identical twins,” it read.
Dr Guyuron, a plastic surgeon from Cleveland, Ohio, found that twins who had been through a divorce looked 1.7 years older than their sibling who had not been through one.
Janet and Jean, identical 54-year-olds, became a case study from the paper as researchers found that Jean – who divorced her partner after 27 years of marriage – had a darker bags under her eyes, as well as ‘numerous and deeper vertical frown lines’, and pronounced smile lines.
Janet on the other hand did not age as drastically, having been happily married for more than three decades.
The surgeon’s study revealed that relationship issues can have an impact on how we look, adding that chronic stress damages DNA and causes inflammation.
“During the Twins Day Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, 186 pairs of identical twins completed a comprehensive questionnaire, and digital images were obtained,” the method in the study read.
“A panel reviewed the images independently and recorded the differences in the perceived twins’ ages and their facial features. The perceived age differences were then correlated with multiple factors.”
It comes as a study has recently revealed that being a child of divorce can have long-term effects on you.
Researchers looked at 13,000 American adults aged 65 and over, and found that one in nine of respondents who experienced their parents divorcing as a child went on to be diagnosed with a potentially fatal condition.
This was in comparison to one in 15 people whose parents stayed together.
The condition that they were diagnosed with was a stroke; something that kills five million people a year across the globe.
Strokes were accountable for one in six cardiovascular disease-related deaths in the US in 2022, reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
