Fat? Blame it on your friends
October 10, 2007
Suffering from an ever-expanding waistline? Blame it on your friends.
In fact, blame it on your best friend. Aside from a sedentary lifestyle and a high-calorie diet, a new study suggests that a contributing factor to putting on the pounds and becoming overweight might be the result of your social network of friends and family.
Social networking with overweight friends can lead to weight gain and obesity, according to new research results published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The closer the relationship is, the greater the influence of one friend or family member to another, when it comes to gaining weight.
Weight gain, being overweight, and obesity is a continually growing national health problem. Researchers are attempting to understand the dynamics that lead to excessive weight gain. It is not a matter of what is fashionable, or an obsession with the cult of skinny, but one of health concern. Being overweight is a health risk.
“Nearly one in three American adults — 66 million men and women — are obese, which puts them at risk for a number of serious health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. With the sharply rising rates of obesity in this country, we need to learn as much as we can about contributing factors. This study describes social network influences that might be an important part of that equation,” states National Institute on Aging (NIA) Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D.
Researchers analyzed data compiled by the Framingham Heart Study to determine the results of this study. The NIA published key findings of the report, which include:
- A key participant’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a close friend who became obese.
- In same-sex friendships, a close friend becoming obese increased a key participant’s chance of becoming obese by 71 percent. However, no such association was found in opposite-sex friendships.
- The perception of friendship also was an important factor. When two people identified each other as close friends, the key participant’s risk of becoming obese increased by 171 percent if his or her friend became obese. In contrast, a key participant was not likely to become obese if someone claimed a close friendship with him or her but the key participant did not report the friendship.
- Among pairs of siblings, one’s becoming obese increased the other’s chance of becoming obese by 40 percent. This finding was more marked among same-sex siblings than opposite-sex siblings.
- In married couples, one spouse’s becoming obese increased the likelihood of the other spouse becoming obese by 37 percent. Husbands and wives appeared to affect each other equally.
- Obesity spread across social ties, despite geographic distance from one person to another. Further, social distance–the degree of social separation between two people in the network–appeared to make more of a difference than geographic distance in the spread of behaviors and norms associated with obesity.
- An immediate neighbor’s becoming obese did not affect a person’s risk of becoming obese.
- Smoking behavior was not associated with the spread of obesity from person to person.
Obviously, we are all influenced by the behavior of others in our social circle, and we encourage others by our own diet and lifestyle habits. But that influence works both ways. Support within social networks can influence weight loss as much as weight gain.
