Marriage just might save your life: A new study finds that married cancer patients are 20 percent more likely to survive their disease than people who are not married.

Married cancer patients were also more likely to be diagnosed before the disease had widely spread, and, perhaps most importantly, they were more likely to receive prescribed care like radiation, surgery or other potentially life-saving treatments, according to the new report published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study authors, including Dr. Paul Nguyen of Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, came to these conclusions after scrutinizing data from nearly one million patients who had been diagnosed with 10 of the deadliest cancers: lung, colorectal, breast, pancreatic, prostate, liver, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, head/neck, ovarian or esophageal. …

This study may also point to an upside of all that spousal nagging – so listen when your husband or wife gets on you to go to the doctor to check out some worrisome symptoms. This study found that this translated to doctors catching cancer in married patients before the disease had time to take root in other parts of the body.