News

Cheating on your partner is not just bad for your marriage but can also give you a heart attack, researchers have claimed.

The warnings come from Italian researchers who reviewed previous studies on the causes of infidelity and its effects. These showed "sudden coital death" to be much more common when a man was meeting his mistress than when he was with his wife. The researchers could not be sure why but put forward a variety of reasons, including a guilty conscience , the Daily Mail reported. The review's authors, from the University of Florence, began by scouring medical literature for research papers including the words 'unfaithfulness' , 'extramarital affairs' , 'infidelity' and 'men' .

This provided information about the type of man who is unfaithful and the potential consequences.

The analysis showed that heart attacks, including fatal ones, were relatively rare when a man was having sex with his wife at home. But when he started to play away, the dangers grew. German studies show that most men who died during sex were having an affair and meeting away from the family home.

Furred-up arteries were blamed for more than a third of the deaths the physical demands of sex are said to cause the fatty plaque that has built up inside arteries to rupture. Liaisons away from home and with younger women are particularly dangerous. The stress of satisfying a woman who is likely to be younger than the man's wife may also be to blame, as can the strain of keeping an affair secret.