Careful there! I am not advising you to get rid of your fat friends, but rather to tell your friends to get rid of their fat (the difference a comma makes!)

Why, you ask? Because a new study shows that obesity can spread through your close circle of friends and family. And when you think about it, this is only but natural. Remember: our idea of what is acceptable is all about perception and when the view around us changes, so does our idea about certain things like body weight and appearance.

A spouse becoming obese increased the probability of the other following suit by about 37%. A brother’s probability was studied to be about 40% if his sibling became obese. But the biggest surprise was between unrelated (but close) people:

The risk climbed even more sharply among friends — between 57 and 171 percent, depending on whether they considered each other mutual friends. Moreover, friends affected friends’ risk even when they lived far apart, and the influence cascaded through three degrees of separation before petering out, the researchers found.

- Obesity Spreads In Social Circles As Trends Do, Study Indicates

This and numerous other articles and TV news segments all over the broadcasting world are all based on a study published in the New England Journal Of Medicine, of nearly 12000 people from the Framingham area of Massachusetts, over a period of almost 32 years. I can’t recall a more detailed study than this, but like some other media outlets are reporting, the results are not too surprising. Some of these results were always known by simple observation: The spousal connection, obese families having obese children have all been seen in numerous cases - all we have now is concrete percentage numbers.

Still, the study is important in that it shows us that sometimes extraneous factors other than diet and exercise can play big, sub-conscious roles. When “What’s for dinner?” is answered by “Pizza!” and wild cheers from the children, there isn’t much one or the other spouse can do. Even if one feels in one’s mind that pizza may not be the best way to end the day, he/she just “goes with the flow” and there you have it folks: the slippery slide!

“What spreads is an idea. As people around you gain weight, your attitudes about what constitutes an acceptable body size changes, and you might follow suit and emulate that body size. It may cross some kind of threshold, and you can see an epidemic take off. Once it starts, it’s hard to stop it. It can spread like wildfire.”

If there is one good thing about this study it is this: the results work both ways! I mean that health-conscious friends/spouses seemed to have a good effect on their respective counterparts. While choosing a partner cannot be based on their eating habits (which can change, anyway), knowing the extent of one’s influence on the other is important, as this study shows!

Study: The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years

Technorati Tags: health, nutrition, fitness, obesity, social-network

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Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

When an article begins with …

“If you’ve ever found yourself not just wanting but needing a gooey slice of pizza, you know what it’s like to crave food.”

… you just know you want need to read it! Take a bite out of your cravings describes the irresistible urge that certain foods present to us and the complex chemical reactions that decide how we deal with these urges.

Did you know that Food Cravings …

• need not indicate a nutritional deficit? (people with enough sodium in their regular diets could still crave salty foods)
• activate three regions of the brain: the hippocampus, insula and caudate, three areas also reported to be involved in drug cravings?
• could simply be hormonal as indicated in a study on college-aged women?

For more, simply read the article and understand your food cravings.

Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:

1. Middle class fuelling child obesity: Middle-class mothers who work are more likely to have obese children than mothers with poorer families, according to alarming new research published this week.
2. Private gym for teens aims to address obesity: Welcome to Overtime Fitness Inc., one of the nation’s only private gyms for teens.
3. Curry Spice Chemical Could Curb Alzheimer’s: A chemical found in curry (turmeric) may help the immune system clear away brain plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease, a new study suggests.
4. Intensive Vegetable-Fruit Diet Shows No Effect on Breast Cancer Return: Hopes that a diet low in fat and chock-full of fruit and vegetables might prevent the return of breast cancer have been dashed by a seven-year experiment in more than 3,000 women.
5. Fast food brands hit kids online: Fast food brands are getting around laws banning the promotion of unhealthy snacks online, research suggests.
6. 75 percent of Americans overweight by 2015: If people keep gaining weight at the current rate, fat will be the norm by 2015, with 75 percent of U.S. adults overweight and 41 percent obese, U.S. researchers predicted on Wednesday.
7. Hummus in the school cafeteria?: The dynamo treat? Single-serve portions of hummus and it may be coming to a school cafeteria near you.
8. Healthy weight link to longevity: Keeping a healthy weight may help people live longer by limiting brain exposure to insulin, say US scientists.
9. No love handles now? Just wait: How do you feel about gaining 10 to 20 pounds? Researchers say most Americans probably will within the next 10 years if they continue their current exercise and eating habits.
10. Take a bite out of your cravings: If you’ve ever found yourself not just wanting but needing a gooey slice of pizza, you know what it’s like to crave food.
11. Health: ‘Good Carbs’ Yield Newfound Benefits: Researchers are now linking bad carbs, said to rate high on the ‘glycemic index’, with health problems as dissimilar as acne and eye diseases.
12. Weight Training for Heart Disease: It’s no longer a no-no. Moderate weight training offers big benefits to people with heart disease, the American Heart Association says.
13. Hunger ‘links asthma and obesity’: Researchers say they may have worked out why the obese are more prone to asthma than those of normal weight.

Get the best health and fitness stories of the week in your RSS inbox.

Have a great weekend!

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, health news, fitness news, health links, fitness links, del.icio.us

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