Considering how strong emotions can affect your health for the positive -- think anger -- it's not surprising to learn that negative feelings associated with stress may have quite the opposite effect, especially when it comes to surviving cancer.

The odds of survival drop sharply among folks who are married but separated after receiving a cancer diagnosis, regardless of gender, based on a recent analysis of nearly 4 million cancer patients over five- and 10-year periods. In fact, widowed spouses, divorced patients and those who never married lived longer than people who were separated from their married partners. By the numbers, over the course of a decade:

* The number of separated spouses who survived after being diagnosed with cancer was less than 37 percent.

* Among the never-married, nearly 52 percent survived after a cancer diagnosis.

* The best results were among married cancer patients who survived at a 57.5 percent clip.

Interestingly, even patients who lost their spouses to death survived a cancer diagnosis better (almost 41 percent) than those who were merely separated in life from them. Scientists attributed these results among separated patients to unforeseen life events triggered by periods of great conflict, versus those handling the death of a spouse viewing it as "a natural phase of life."

Medline Plus August 24, 2009

Cancer (Journal) August 24, 2009