Polygamy & The Heart

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Telegraph April 29

By Laura Donnelly

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'Polygamy 'is bad for the heart'

The more wives a man has, the greater his risk of heart disease, the first major study of the health risks of polygamy finds'

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'Men with multiple wives have four times the risk of heart disease, a new study has found. 

Researchers said the study suggested that the stress of running multiple households and the “emotional expense” of polygamy could place strain on the heart.

'Research on 687 men in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates found that the risks of heart disease increased with each extra wife.

Two thirds of the men in the research were monogamous while the rest had between two and four wives.'

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'The study by King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, presented at the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology Congress in Abu Dhabi, said the link between number of wives and heart problems was “significant”.

Dr Amin Daoulah, research author, said: “We found an association between an increasing number of wives and the severity and number of coronary blockages. This could be because the need to provide and maintain separate households multiplies the financial burden and emotional expense. “Each household must be treated fairly and equally, and it seems likely that the stress of doing that for several spouses and possibly several families of children is considerable.” He said a number of other factors – such as levels of physical activity and intimacy – which might influence heart disease levels – should be analysed in greater depth. The study was observational, examining the relationship between the presence and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) and number of wives.' 

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Male patients referred for coronary angiography at five hospitals, with an average age of 59, were included in the research. In total, 68 per cent of those in the study had one wife while 19 per cent had 2 wives, 10 per cent had 3 wives and 3 per cent had 4 wives. Dr Daoulah said: "There is evidence that married people have better overall health and longevity but until now no study has assessed the effect of polygamy on cardiovascular health. “Men who practice polygamy have up to four concurrent wives who can reside in the same or different regions but do not normally reside in the same house.” Polygamy is practiced mainly in North and West Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

The study found men with more than one wife also likely to be older, and to earn more. After adjusting for baseline differences, the researchers showed that men who practiced polygamy had a 4.6-fold increased risk of coronary heart disease, with a 3.5-fold increased risk of disease in the left main artery, and a 2.6-fold elevated risk of multivessel disease.

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'He said it would be interesting to see what effect polygamy had on wives’ risk of heart disease.'

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Satirically, still being in the state of selective singleness in a very small Christian pool in the secular Western world, I am pondering on what risk of heart disease there might be to having one wife, even while acknowledging the quote "There is evidence that married people have better overall health and longevity' from more than once source.

There is the possibility of both a literal and figurative broken heart, looks like...

There of course has to be, in my case, a reasonably good, rationally good, Christian wife.

Mueller notes that Christ supports monogamy 'as the only rightful form of marriage' from Matthew 19: 4-6. Mueller (1996: 861).

I can agree from Genesis 1-3 and the New Testament this is the definitive and definite Biblical standard.

I had a Missions Professor opine at ACTS/Trinity Western University that a husband that committed polygamy as a Christian was not necessarily committing a sin.

The Professor was thinking in the context of African and Indian converts to Christianity that had more than one wife and I deduce was reasoning divorce of some of those wives Biblically at that point would be considered sinful and the much greater evil. Therefore, polygamy, in that context, not necessarily sinful, for the sake of family.

However, the Biblical standard stands as can be seen for Biblical leadership as an overseer in 1 Timothy (3) must be the husband of one wife; as seen also in Titus (1),

Mueller, along the lines of what my Missions' Professor stated writes that the Bible/New Testament does not condemn the plural marriages of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible but the evil effects of polygamy upon families were described throughout the Hebrew Bible. Mueller (1996: 861).

Mueller, J.T. (1996) Polygamy, in Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids, Baker Books.

Telegraph