According to a recent study by the Center on Aging at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, divorce can result in a long-lasting detrimental effect on a person's mental and physical well-being, which cannot be restored even after remarriage.

The study - published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior - involved 8,652 people in the '51-61 years' age-group. The findings of the study revealed that effects of divorce on health are lingering - while divorcees are 20 percent more prone to chronic illnesses, like cancer, as compared to unmarried people; those who remarry have a
12 percent more risk of chronic illnesses vis-a-vis the unmarried.

Substantiating the opinion that everyone embarks on adulthood with a "health stock" that is kept or eroded conditional on one's marital experience, study researcher Linda Waite said that divorce proceedings can be so stressful that people may ignore their health; and "once the health has deteriorated, it is hard to snap back!"

Waite elaborated: "Remarriage helps. It puts you back on a healthy trajectory, but it puts you back on a healthy trajectory from a lower point, because you didn't take care of yourself for a year."

The study emphasizes that since health conditions like cancer and heart disease develop slowly over a long period; their detrimental effect on health is undermined by divorce, even after a person remarries.