[sari]

Obesity appears to spread from one person to another like a virus or a fad, researchers reported yesterday in a first-of-its-kind study that helps explain -- and could help fight -- one of the nation's biggest public health problems.

The study, involving more than 12,000 people tracked over 32 years, found that social networks play a surprisingly powerful role in determining an individual's chances of gaining weight, transmitting an increased risk of becoming obese from wives to husbands, from brothers to brothers and from friends to friends.

The researchers found that when one spouse became obese, the other was 37 percent more likely to do so in the next two to four years, compared with other couples. If a man became obese, his brother's risk rose by 40 percent.

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.

http://www.washingto...d=moreheadlines

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Sounds to me like another way to make people not responsible for their own actions. Another freakin cop-out. Blame everyone else but yourself.

I am not skinny but Im not deathly obese. Why, because I eat late, dont get enough exercise and eat as a comfort, not because my friends are fat.

People need to stand up and take responsibility for their own actions/in-actions. Heck if more people stood up once in a while, maybe they wouldnt be so obese

[jaxisland]

Sounds to me like another way to make people not responsible for their own actions. Another freakin cop-out. Blame everyone else but yourself.

I am not skinny but Im not deathly obese. Why, because I eat late, dont get enough exercise and eat as a comfort, not because my friends are fat.

People need to stand up and take responsibility for their own actions/in-actions. Heck if more people stood up once in a while, maybe they wouldnt be so obese

[dsenette]

i heard that on NPR this morning on my way to work....i agree with their findings...but...it's not exactly a scientific breakthrough....you mean to tell me that if my mom's fat...that there's a good chance that i would inherit her eating habits? what a shocker? we're influenced every day by the people around us...we base decisions on how our friends would react. we make life choices based on the things we've learned from our family...and our spouses (significant others) influence every decision we make throughout the day....

i don't think it's shifting the blame...so much as showing a trend..that honestly didn't take a scientific study to show

[sari]

It's interesting that they keep coming out with these studies and other reasons people are obese. My husband and I have often commented on how thin people were if you see a picture from say 20 or more years ago. Since these levels of obesity are a recent occurrence, I don't see how they can blame your social groups, or even keep trying to find a fat gene - while I know there are people with slow metabolisms and other reasons that they can't lose weight, such as thyroid disease, I somehow doubt that applies to over 50% of our population.

I just read this story about how making products for obese people is big business. Seatbelt extenders, larger booster seats for children, even larger chaise lounges for sun worshippers.

I have to admit to frustration with trying to buy clothes lately; I'm actually quite slender and seem to have a lot of trouble finding clothes that fit. Since women's pants don't go by waist and inseam length, like men's pants do, I have to rely on the non-standard sizes that are applied to women's clothing. A size 4 can vary greatly, so I have to try on a lot of clothes to find one or two items that fit, and the standard sizes seem to keep getting larger. I used to be a size 6, and I'm not any thinner than I was 20 years ago, but clothing manufacturers seem to keep supersizing the clothes. There also seem to be fewer small sizes available - my husband often can't find pants in his size, while there are many large sizes available. It seems to be the reverse of what used to happen, when larger people had to rely on specialty stores in order to find clothes that fit. My husband and I joke that instead of the Big and Tall shops, we should open a Small and Short shop.

Trust me, I'm not complaining about being thin - it just seems that I'm a shrinking market segment now.

[jaxisland]

I believe that people are herd animals. When someone says to go right, you dont want to be the only one going left. Thats how we are, and I have seen that proved time and time again. But that still shouldnt count on your eating habits. Something as important as that, people should have the mind set to stand up and say no, Im not going to get fast food because everyone else is, or go out to eat all the time. And they need to say No to their friends / family / social group. I think the blame falls squarely on the individual.

Now Im speaking in terms of an adult not living at home. When it comes down to a child living with parents or other family then yes, what they see is probably whatt they are going to do, but thats a whole different subject. This is studying older people who can make choices for themselves.

I dont know, I guess I just feel lately like these "experts" and their "studies" always seem to find an exscuse for people, instead of making them stand up and admit, "Im ______ (fill in the blank with the problem), because I made bad choices, and I have to take responsibility and change that."

[warriorscot]

A large factor to increasing cancer and other diseases isn't that they are always more common its that they are detected much better, your average Chinese person couldn't walk into his doctors office say he found a lump and get an MRI the next day and treated the next week, but many Europeans could do just that. If you went back 20 - 30 years with the technology now you would probably find similar or even greater cancer rate, certainly a great many people died in the early days of the chemical industry for example simply because things werent thought to be dangerous where in fact now we know can cause cancer or other diseases. In real terms it would be very strange given the levels of pollution and chines e medical system if cancer rates were in fact lower and if they are they are highly unlikely to remain so.

Its really quite useful to have research like this while it seems obvious by understanding the cause you can then avoid it, or at least try.

[jaxisland]

I dont understand how they can claim increases in anything. If every year 10% more people go to doctors / specialists for screening but they say that cancer / heart disease has gone up 5%, then has it really gone up? The fact that the number of people tested and screened every year grows faster than the rate of positive test results, should have some indication that we are just figuring out whats going on, not that its much more of a problem than it always has been. I would like to see the numbers of "natural causes" deaths from the early 1900s to current times. I bet other than clear cut bullets, wounds, and accidents most deaths back then were natural causes, where today, the same percent of people die but we at least know why most of the time.

I dont know, I dont buy into any of it

[jaxisland]

Yea I wasnt responding specifically to yours, I just continued on the example. I mean as doctors find means to diagnose people better and earlier its going to look like there is a problem when its been the same the whole time. There was a perfect example of this in the eastern US a few years ago.
Within a couple weeks two people were attacked by sharks. But this time, being a slow news month it made national attention twice. So all of a sudden people were focused on these shark attacks, and how we are damaging the enviorment and how sharks are going to get us all bla bla bla. The funniest part about the media is that year there were a total of 7 shark attacks on swimmers, the year before there were 9, 9 stories that never made national news. So data wise shark attacks decrease but because of the attention everyone thought they were on an uncontrollable rise.
This obscurity can be used on obesity, cancer, smoking, drinking, car accidents, or whatever else the story contains.
My post was to raise the questions that maybe it is not a growing problem but one that someone has brought to the forefront.
Just trying to think outside the box, I dont trust the US media that much

[warriorscot]

The sharks were their first, they are one of the many reasons i dont like swimming in the sea, i hate fish in the sea you never see them coming and they scare the bejeesus out of you.

An interesting example of how detection rate rises can cause panic is mercury in vaccines, now there have been ridiculous numbers of tests done and no test has ever shown mercury causes autism not one, people point to the trend that the number of cases rised when the MMR vaccine was introduced but when looked at the increase in autism was almost completely accounted for by the increase in number of conditions labelled as autism and the better ability to detect and classify autism even in mild forms and when they discounted these factors autism levels appeared to be stable for the last few decades. And half of the problem was the media and people that wanted to monopolise on the medias attention even disregarding things like common sense that say that if you feed your child more mercury in its fish fingers its MMR jab isnt gonna do much, and if even in the days when mercury wasnt restricted and contamination was massive their wasnt in increased instance of autism an MMR is so gonna do the job. It was just a fantastic example of not only irresponsible media coverage and the effect of improved medical science.

[jaxisland]

Media hides behind our first amendment and is able to take anything they want and twist it so it scares the everyday person. I personally cannot watch / read the garbage. If its big news, Im gonna hear about it somehow

[jaxisland]

I believe our media uses fear to steer the herd in what ever direction they want.

With one fatal swoop MarkN drives the nail home. Right on target my friend, right on.