Wives 'nag' husbands to go for regular health check-ups

Know why married men go for more health check-ups than younger, unmarried adults? Kudos to their wives for "nagging" them into visiting the doctor.

Wives are good at encouraging their husbands to go to the doctor for recommended health screenings such as diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, researchers said.

"Also, married men enjoy greater health benefits than their unmarried counterparts," according to a latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US.

Married men may also feel obligated to stay healthy to provide for their families.

"Having a spouse may indirectly evoke in men a sense of economic and social obligation to the family," the researchers from the CDC's National Centre for Health Statistics wrote.

"For example, nearly 80 percent of married men in the US had their blood pressure checked in the last year compared to 65 percent of cohabiting men and 67 percent of other unmarried men," the CDC report emphasised.

Such encouragement may happen more often in marriages than unmarried men simply because that type of "nagging" takes longer to develop in relationships, Kelly Musick, an associate professor at Cornell University's College of Human Ecology was quoted as saying.