I was a child when my parent’s marriage ended. Nothing unique about that. Up to 50% of us come from divorced homes.

It was a long time ago, and while at the time I experienced academic difficulties, poverty and some depression, I felt I’d left any effects far behind.

Or so I thought.

Surprisingly, researchers have found that the fallout from divorce may extend well into adulthood, actually increasing the stroke risk of adults like me to a level on par with other well-established risk factors for stroke…

Childhood divorce and stroke risk

An international team of researchers examined a sample of 13,205 adults ages 65 and older from U.S. population-based data. Of the adults, 56.6 percent were female, and none had ever experienced childhood abuse. An estimated 13.9 percent had experienced parental divorce during their childhood.

Here’s the shocking part: One in nine of those participants whose parents had divorced while they were children had suffered a stroke. In comparison, just one in 15 of those whose parents had not divorced during their childhood experienced a stroke.

In other words, older Americans who experienced parental divorce, even those with no history of childhood abuse, are 61 percent more likely to experience a stroke than their peers from intact families.

The researchers say the risk remained the same even after taking into account most of the known risk factors for stroke, and the risk was similar among both men and women.

But perhaps most compelling is that the strong association found between parental divorce and stroke is just as significant as two other well-established stroke risk factors: diabetes and depression.

This study reinforces research conducted almost a decade ago, finding similarly strong links in a different population-based sample.

“We need to shed light on the mechanisms that may contribute to this association,” says senior author Esme Fuller-Thomson, a professor at the University of Toronto. “While these types of survey-based studies cannot establish causality, we are hoping that our consistent findings will inspire others to examine the topic.”

“We found that even when people hadn’t experienced childhood physical and sexual abuse and had at least one adult who made them feel safe in their childhood home, they still were more likely to have a stroke if their parents had divorced,” says co-author Philip Baiden, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Explaining the stroke-divorce link

While the researchers say it’s not clear why the link between parental divorce and stroke exists, they theorize both biological and social factors could play a role.

To no one’s surprise, one of the key factors could be stress.

“From a biological embedding perspective, having your parents split up during childhood could lead to sustained high levels of stress hormones,” Fuller-Thomson says. “Experiencing this as a child could have lasting influences on the developing brain and a child’s ability to respond to stress.”

“If future research finds similar links between parental divorce and stroke, it is possible that knowledge about whether or not their patient grew up in an intact family will be used by health professionals to improve targeted outreach for stroke prevention and education,” says First author Mary Kate Schilke, a university lecturer at Tyndale University.

For now, we can definitely take our own steps toward stroke prevention, starting with how we handle stress.

It’s impossible to completely eliminate stress from our lives. But there are things we can do to mitigate its impact and how we respond to it. Outlets, including yoga, meditation and exercise could help, as well as developing techniques that could give us more emotional control over stressful situations.

While there isn’t a strong link between a healthy diet and lower stroke risk, it never hurts to follow an eating plan rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish and low in salt, added sugars, red meat and highly processed foods. All of this can help boost your cardiovascular health — and following a heart-healthy lifestyle has been shown to cut stroke risk by 30 to 45 percent.

Sources:

Adult children of divorced parents at higher risk of stroke — EurekAlert!

Parental divorce’s long shadow: Elevated stroke risk among older Americans — PLOS One

Parental divorce or separation and children’s mental health — World Psychiatry