Psychology Today blogger Dr. Stephen T. Sinatra tipped us off to a recent study on the effects of marriage and heart health. Turns out, staying in an unhealthy relationship can do more than damage your psyche: It can calcify your arteries. Says Sinatra:

Married people experience less cardiovascular disease than single people, however, a bad marriage can be disastrous to the heart.

Researchers studied married couples' communication styles while also tracking their heart health, concluding that women who experienced severe hostility during marital disputes had the highest level of calcification. Husbands who exhibited the most controlling behavior during marital disputes had the highest of all men in the study.

What's happening? The body is producing stress chemicals, and the angrier or more controlling you are, the more your arteries suffer.

I'm thinking a new slogan here: "Divorce: It does a body good."

A new sleep study reports that women in unhappy marriages suffer from more sleep problems than those in happy unions, and sleep problems, in turn, lead to other health issues. This is the first study to track marital satisfaction and sleep. Unfortunately, divorced women are prone to sleep issues, as well. Not getting the most out of your eight hours? Check out a directory sleep clinics.

The magic little pill may spell trouble. According to a June 2008 report, a Harvard Medical School study said Viagra may add to marital stress. A couple used to dutifully kiss and go to sleep. Now he's popping pills, looking to reclaim his sexuality. Some wives may say Hallelujah, others may feel ambushed into re-creating his sexual fantasies. And all that while the laundry needs to be done.

Then there's another possibility. The study doesn't say it, but it's also possible he's met someone new, someone young and frisky. That's why he's taking Viagra.

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I ran across an interesting article the other day. A young couple married, lived together, had a child in their seven-year relationship and got divorced. I know. There's nothing earth shattering about that. Keep reading.

It was a same-sex couple, except one of the two didn't know it.

Jennifer Jack married Andrew Mireles at 16. They parted ways after one child and seven years. Jack decided to flip through a high school yearbook one day, and she found a picture of her ex-husband, Andrew - or should I say, Phyllis?

Phyllis Mireles changed "gender" at some time in her life, taking on the name Andrew. No sex change, no funky surgery, and all the equipment was perfectly female, reports Fox News. Mireles claims Jack knew of Mireles' true gender all along — and I'm having trouble swallowing that Jack states otherwise.

It seems a judge is swallowing Jack's shocked disbelief - he's allowing an annulment.

I must be missing something. I mean, seven years, people. And a child. It's pretty tough to hide that you don't have a penis for that long. The courts buy this?

Mireles now finds himself in a custody battle for his (her?) kids. Jack's attorney states that Mireles is "a convicted felon and has some indiscretions that would put him back in jail if his probation was revoked."

I'm wondering where this came from? Were these issues before Mireles was outed from the proverbial closet? Was Mireles a bad person with his kids? Is this just some scheme to get back at him for being cross gender?

And what about Jack? Why the horrified reaction now? Is Jack embarrassed that she lived with a woman and now wants to protect her self-identity through revenge?

Remember — seven years, one child. And Jack didn't know her husband was a she? Yeah. Right.

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It seems like it just gets worse and worse in Afghanistan.

In what seems to be a not-very-uncommon tragedy, an Afghan woman set herself on fire outside a courthouse in Mehtaralam. A judge had just chastised her for seeking a divorce, and without much else to do instead, she doused herself in gasoline that she'd smuggled into the courthouse under her burka and set herself on fire.

The international press knows little about the details of the incident, except for the woman's first name — Pakhtana — and that she's 25. Back in December, we wrote about a similar case with a girl going through a divorce at the age of 11.

While Afghanistan has officially lossened the rules for women in the post-Taliban era, tragedies like this are occurring almost daily. It is so common in that part of the world that incidents like this one are barely making the papers.

I have to wonder — are these women doing this because they want to die? Or is it like the ever-increasing trend of cutting and self-mutilation that takes place among young women in the West? Experts say that the victims of this type of self-abuse do it not as a suicide attempt, but because the pain is so great on the inside that any kind of physical expression of it is a relief.

Pakhtana is in a local hospital, recovering from her injuries.

The latest news on the Pamela Anderson front is that she's not pregnant, but she's still going ahead with her divorce from hubby Rick Salomon. Wonder if another reconciliation is in the works?

Despite many claims that Pam wasn't pregnant, news media sources have stuck to the prospect that she was, and that it would be of great advantage to her in the impending divorce proceedings.

Now, however, whether she miscarried or was never pregnant to begin with, there is no baby in the equation. As crazy as this whirlwind marriage of hers has been, you do have to feel sorry for her. Either she wasn't pregnant all along with millions of people insisting she was and really only talking about what she would gain from the divorce, or she really was pregnant and instead of focusing on that loss, again, it's the monetary loss that seems most mentioned.

Again, plans are still on for Pam and Rick to split. The two have started to get chummy however, so don't be surprised if there's a hold placed on the proceedings.

Here's one of those medical study stories that you're not sure whether to believe. But if there's any credence to it, this one is pretty scary.

Researchers in Sweden say that babies of separated parents are three times more likely to develop diabetes. The theory is that children — even babies — pick up on the stress their parents are feeling and it causes them to becomes stressed, themselves. And that, in turn, leads to auto-immunity, a condition where the immune system attacks insulin-producing cells.

I only saw a brief mention of this and didn't see much else in the way of support for the theory. But if there's anything to this study, it's something worth looking into. Here in the U.S., we have increasing rates of childhood obesity and diabetes, and I don't remember hearing anyone link up these problems with our sky-high divorce rate. Is there a correlation? Maybe there are some more researchers out there willing to check it out.

Click here for more.

I became agitated reading this article from the Times Of India where a husband was granted a divorce because his wife had an abortion. Could a judge grant a divorce because the wife had abortions without first informing her husband?

I always thought women had control over their bodies and had the right to choose. The judge in India decided the wife's decision to have an abortion without her husband's consent amounted to cruelty.

In normal circumstances, a woman would discuss the possibility of abortion with her husband or partner, although she would still have the final say. In this case, the husband and wife lived separately for over eight years out of a 14-year marriage. There didn't seem to be much time to discuss the situation.

I'd like to know when the abortions took place. Was the couple in a continual relationship despite living apart? The court noted that there were numerous feuds between the parties over "trivial matters." The judge mentioned the allegation that the wife took money and jewelry from the husband's parents.

I don't buy the court's rationale. This fuzzy reasoning was also found in my earlier report of an Indian judge who granted a husband a divorce because his wife was HIV-positive. In the abortion case, the wife claims the charges were concocted and not true. She was interested in returning to her matrimonial home and didn't want to divorce.

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Yesterday, I wrote about the judge in India who granted a divorce solely on the grounds that his wife was HIV-positive. Since that was my first impression of the case, I searched to find other places where divorce was based on HIV infection. I found no related cases.

In Africa, AIDS-infected husbands often force wives to have sex without a condom. This could constitute the basis for a divorce. So far in the U.S., there are only a handful of court cases linking the disease and divorce. Chiefly these revolve around child custody and visitation rights of the AIDS-infected spouse. Because of the possible stigma, 90% of AIDS-related divorce cases nationwide are settled out of court.

I don't think the precedent of the India court should be widely followed. That decision is unique since the judge was punishing the wife for not informing the husband prior to the marriage that she had AIDS. In 1998, the Supreme Court of India ruled that persons who are HIV-positive must inform future spouses. Under the Hindu Marriage Act, women can obtain a divorce if their husband suffers from any venereal disease in a communicable form. Should this law — intended to protect women — be applied to men as well?

With over three million infected, India ranks third in the world for the number of AIDS patients — right after South Africa and Nigeria. Men alone are not responsible for fueling the epidemic since promiscuity among women is rising. Husbands in lower socio-economic classes have been generally "considerate and supportive."

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For the first time on record, a court in New Delhi, India, granted a divorce to a man because his wife is HIV-positive. The judge allowed the divorce petition on the grounds that "marriage without sex is anathema."

Few facts have been revealed and I find this case troubling. I question the reasoning for the divorce and the public policy implications. Does this divorce send the right message to other couples experiencing similar medical situations?

This couple were married in October 2000, and it's implied that they never had a "cordial" sexual relationship. The wife became pregnant in March 2001 and her doctor advised that she undergo the HIV-1 and Elisa tests. The Elisa test showed she was HIV-positive.

The wife, who worked at a hospital, claimed the test results were erroneous and said she would get tested again in the seventh or eighth month of her pregnancy. The husband objected and persuaded her to undergo another test. The second test also showed she had HIV/AIDS. She had an abortion in July 2001. The husband tested negative, so she was not infected by him.

The judge found the wife guilty of cruelty by not disclosing her status. The court proclaimed that the husband "cannot be reasonably expected to live with her and lead a happy married life."

I thought that marriage was a commitment for better or for worse. While the wife may have been deceitful, if she knew before the marriage that she was infected, there's no evidence to prove it. Was she previously married? Did she have a blood transfusion? Did she work in a laboratory of the hospital?

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