Although it’s strongly frowned upon here in the United States, polygamy is a socially acceptable way to live in other parts of the world. In the Middle East and countries with large Muslim populations, polygamy is a regular practice. Muslim men may marry up to four wives, but only if they can financially and emotionally provide for them, treating them all equally (well, as equally as women can be treated in such a culture.) While the thinking is that all these women benefit the man in making his life easier, a new study has found that’s not the case at all. The study found that polygamous men are more likely to suffer from heart disease.
According to Dr. Amin Daoulah, a cardiologist at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Saudi Arabia, the more wives a man has the more coronary blockages he has to match. It’s these men who practice polygamy who are quadruple at risk of having blocked arteries than men who stick to just one wife. (Someone please call the producers of Sister Wives)
From an evolutionary standpoint, polygamy makes sense for men. Men get to have sex with many women, spread their seed, then move on as the women stay behind and raise the kids. It’s horrifying thought, but evolutionary scientists have decided, after centuries of research, it's just simply the case. You can’t argue science.
But since polygamy should come so natural to men, based on biology and evolution, why is it killing them?
Daoulah’s study of 687 men, average 59 years of age, in Saudi Arabia and the United Arabia, found that the polygamous men in the group had a 4.6 times higher risk of having narrowed coronary arteries and 2.6 times higher risk of having multiple of those narrowed arteries compared to the monogamous men in the study. Basically, the more women in your life, the unhealthier your heart.
The researchers attribute these findings to stress and society. Whereas having multiple wives in the days of the caveman probably did make it easier for men to go about their seed-spreading ways, today these men must provide for their wives and all the children they have. In Islam, for example, each wife usually has her own home, which would clearly be a financial burden for anyone.
Also, bringing more people into a family setting creates for more family related stress and drama. Both these stresses, emotional and financial, are major contributors to heart disease.
Polygamy is a simple case of more not being better. It’s like pizza. It’s one thing to enjoy a whole pie of your own, but when you finish it, and you get on Seamless to order another one, because two just seems better than one, then you have problems. You’re not only creating a financial burden, because large pizzas aren’t cheap, but you’re also creating emotional and physical burdens too ― are you really equipped enough to handle a second or third pizza? Probably not, and that’s OK.
Sometimes you should just quit while you’re ahead and give the one pizza you have everything you’ve got. By that rationale, monogamy sounds delicious to me.
Image: Giphy(2)
