A recent study from the good folks at the New England Journal of Medicine has revealed that the spread of obesity functions much like an online social network. An article in last week’s New York Times has amplified both the size and scope of the NEJM study. Seemingly every medical professional with a blog has been weighing in with an opinion of their own.
Jon Barron’s health blog reported some of the more surprising details contained in the journals conclusions. Essentially, if you have a network of friends who are either obese or are in the process of becoming significantly overweight you are extremely likely to follow suit. For instance, “If your spouse becomes obese your chances of weight gain increase by 37%, but if your friends become obese your chances of doing the same increase by an astounding 171%.”
GetFitSource, a blog specializing in healthy lifestyles, noted that this is a natural tendency among humans and that, basically, this is a case of monkey see- monkey do. The post noted that “For example, if a close friend or sibling returns from a European vacation, we are likely to follow.” Obviously, they agreed that this type of peer motivation was an integral part of your overall odds in regards to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. “If close friends or siblings become fat, well, gradually our norms for what is acceptable weight-wise may loosen and we are probably less resistant to gaining weight.”
Having a look at the New York Times article showed me an aspect of the study that I hadn’t initially thought of, but completely made sense upon realization- unhealthy eating habits are just like society’s other chief bad habit-smoking. The NYT article said “obesity was just the start… They have already begun asking about other health-related issues. Smoking, for example — have smokers become more isolated over time?” Think about how smokers hang around together and in any environment you work in, the smokers always tend to band together. So much time spent outside coughing together is probably good for fostering togetherness.
“After all, networks evolve, and if smoking becomes unacceptable, smokers might be expected to cluster in their own little orbits, cut off from the mainstream. That, Dr. Fowler said, is exactly what happened. The Framingham data from the 1970s show smokers embedded in social networks just like everyone else. But by the 1990s, smokers began to be shunted to the side, their links to nonsmokers breaking.”
The Framingham data was an integral part in laying the base for the study referenced in the NEJM. Effectively, the Framingham Study (named for the Massachusetts town where it has been going on for several decades) is to observe how an interconnected group of people influences each others behavior over time. The NYT article noted that “as part of the study, participants named friends who could help locate them if researchers lost contact. That link was just what was needed to construct a social network and watch it evolve over decades — a web of friends and friends of friends along with family members.”
The conclusions of the Framingham study are considerable. “The striking feature of networks… Is that they amplify whatever effect they are propagating. One person catches a cold and spreads it to 10 friends, each of whom spreads it to 10 more friends.”
Furthermore, the exact same thing seemed to happen with individuals who had become obese.
“Dr. Christakis and his colleague James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, say they do not know how it happened, but the dynamic was clear — when one person became obese, that person’s friends were more likely to become obese and so were their friends and their friends’ friends.”
One of the things that I am left wondering is whether it would be possible to integrate people into social networks and increase the effectiveness of a weightloss program or a common diet that is shared between the group. If friends influencing friends is the #1 thing that leads to obesity (aside from eating all of the time, obviously) it can definitely be harnessed to aid weight loss and more importantly to help keep the weight off. Since you see so many young people (and senior citizens as well in some cases) documenting their lives online, why not have us all put our health data right out there for a select group of people to see or better yet- the entire world.
This is a topic probably best studied by a team of professionals including, exercise physiologists, sociologists and psychologists. It’s a phenomena that is all too familiar.
I am a speaker on the areas of human potential, peak performance and personal development and I’m also an exercise physiologist. I have always advocated that you are a product of your environment.
An example of this can be seen in the military; people in the military hold themselves to the highest possible standard but when they leave they generally go back to mediocre lives. While they’re serving they will endure anything because they are around others with that same level of hardcore discipline.
What I am getting at is, no matter what environment you are consistently sujected to, it will gradually become part of who you are. If you don’t have the support of your peers then it’s unlikely that you will become outstanding while they remain mediocre, miserable or fat.
My advice is two-fold: surround yourself with a core group of friends that live by the standard you wish to hold yourself to and for those you do not want to “dump”, such as a well meaning family member with low standards for life, you need to become a leader and do so by example. Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk. Soon others will want to have a piece of what you have, not because you nagged them to but because they have seen what it’s done for you.
If you want to lose weight or avoid obesity, then join a sports team, walking group, fitness centre, martial arts club etc. This will ensure a certain amount of your time is spent around fit and healthy people, or at least people who are aiming for this lifestyle.
Well that’s just my two cents on a topic I am very passionate about. Well done on a great post.
Chris Lyons.
http://www.endlesshumanpotential.com