Bachelors Twice As Likely To Get Cancer As Married Men, Says Study

Bachelors are twice as likely to develop one of the 13 most common cancers - such as prostate and lung cancer - than their married counterparts, a study has found.

Scientists at the University of Oslo looked at the cancer rates and marital status of 440,000 men over 40 years and found that men who had never wed, had a 35% chance of getting cancer, compared to 18% for married men.

The findings, published in the BioMed Central Public Health journal, didn’t include those who had divorced or were widowed, only those who had never been married.

It was also found that death rates increased by 3.4% among single men every decade compared to those who’ve settled down.

Researchers believe that the reduction in cancer risk among married men could be down to the support of their wives.

“It is possible that married individuals, because they are taken care of by their spouse, are more prone than the unmarried to visit a physician at occurrence of symptoms, thus possibly discovering tumors at an earlier stage," the authors from the study have said.

However, it wasn’t just unmarried men in the spotlight of the study – single women also had generally poorer health, too.

The recent Norwegian study coincided with a previous study that married people have better health than single people because they tend not to smoke and drink as much.