Have you ever been bothered by your wives' constant prodding to see a doctor, drink medicine, stop smoking, run, walk, move your body? If so, don't be. New study suggests that this could be your extra lifeline.

A research published in the October 13 issue of BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health looked at the data of more than 440,000 Norwegian men and women diagnosed with cancer between 1970 and 2007.

Norwegians researchers found that 200,000 died of cancer. More surprisingly, further review of the patients' marital statuses, showed that men were up to 35 percent more likely to die if they were never married.

Håkon Kravdal from the University of Oslo and Dr Astri Syse from the Cancer Registry of Norway said that the 40 year span study showed that the unmarried have a greater risk of mortality regardless of age, education, site of tumour, time since diagnosis, and cancer stage.

The 40 year study also showed that the effect of never having been married on mortality has doubled from 18% to 35% for men. Women, on the other hand, showed an increase of 17% to 22%, according to Medical News Today.

Where lies the difference? "It is possible that married individuals, because they are taken care of by their spouse, are more prone than the unmarried to visit a physician at occurrence of symptoms, thus possibly discovering tumors at an earlier stage," the authors wrote.

A healthier lifestyle may also be expected because of the additional emotional and economic support shared by the spouse.