Excerpts from :Your Best Friend Can Make You Fat: study
Thursday Jul 26 18:40 AEST
Could your best friend make you fat?
Researchers who have studied "networks" of obesity think so: they found that if someone's friend becomes obese, that person's chances of becoming obese increase by more than half.
Siblings and spouses also have an influence, although a reduced one - people whose siblings became obese were themselves 40 per cent more likely to grow obese, while people whose spouses became obese were 37 per cent more likely to.
"This is the first (study) to show how obesity spreads through the social network from person to person to person," James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, who worked on the study, told a telephone briefing…
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers said their findings show that obesity is contagious - not like a virus is contagious, but in a social sense…
If someone became obese, their friends were 57 per cent more likely to become obese over the 32 years, they found. If people named one another as contacts, they were 171 per cent, or more than double, as likely to become obese if the other did...
The effect held for three degrees of separation. If a person became obese, their friends were more likely to become obese, but also friends of friends. It also occurred in shorter periods within the 32-year span...
"People look around them and see people gaining weight and it might change their attitude about what constitutes an acceptable body size," he added. "You might say it's OK to be heavier."
The findings held even if people lived 800km apart or even further. But having an obese neighbour did not affect a person's likelihood of becoming obese - which suggests that common environments are not to blame...
©AAP 2007
Siblings and spouses also have an influence, although a reduced one - people whose siblings became obese were themselves 40 per cent more likely to grow obese, while people whose spouses became obese were 37 per cent more likely to.
"This is the first (study) to show how obesity spreads through the social network from person to person to person," James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, who worked on the study, told a telephone briefing…
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers said their findings show that obesity is contagious - not like a virus is contagious, but in a social sense…
If someone became obese, their friends were 57 per cent more likely to become obese over the 32 years, they found. If people named one another as contacts, they were 171 per cent, or more than double, as likely to become obese if the other did...
The effect held for three degrees of separation. If a person became obese, their friends were more likely to become obese, but also friends of friends. It also occurred in shorter periods within the 32-year span...
"People look around them and see people gaining weight and it might change their attitude about what constitutes an acceptable body size," he added. "You might say it's OK to be heavier."
The findings held even if people lived 800km apart or even further. But having an obese neighbour did not affect a person's likelihood of becoming obese - which suggests that common environments are not to blame...
©AAP 2007
4 comments:
Larps, am I still your friend?
larps, dapat i-influence mo ako to lose some weight. di ba friends tayo?
I have read this news recently and wondered if it's true.
The study says that it is not about eating together or exercising together, but sharing ideas about what healthy behaviours are."
Friends wield more influence than family because "you get to choose your friends, you don't get to choose your family," so most people are closer to their good friends than they are to their relatives.
The good news is that "not only is it possible for obesity to spread, it's also possible for thinness to spread,"
So, if I were to go along with the study, kayong tatlong Maria will even up and end to be sexy bathing beauties, eh?
Ernie, from 2 of the three gumamelas, OUCH!
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