FAT IS CONTAGIOUS??'-eroski

[maria angelica sassone]

The first cigarette is, in most cases, an act of imitation. It starts smoking to represent a social role and feel integrated into the group where the snuff is frowned upon. A Harvard study now suggests that obesity is also shared among friends. Copies the bad eating habits and participates in the poor results. Researcher Alison Hill, author of the report leaves no doubt: "Having friends obese doubles the chance of it."

- Image: Procsilas Flies -

The more obese are obese friends or more friends you have, the more likely to be overweight. This is the premise that concludes the study led by Alison Hill, a researcher at Harvard, published by the journal Computational Biology. In the search for the causes of the proliferation of cases of obesity, especially in the alarming increase in children and adolescents , the researchers applied a mathematical model developed by the Framingham Heart Study, a project of Boston University that identifies factors common diseases over time in the city of Framingham.

The key to discovering the work is that people who are overweight are joined by personal ties beyond the family

The outcome of the data quantified the potential of becoming obese, the likelihood of excessive weight is double if you have four friends obese. The percentage increases with the number of obese friends. This factor is in addition to other conditions, which are crucial or harmless, depending on the person. Bad habits, unbalanced diet and lack of exercise have a major impact on weight gain. But, and here lies the novelty, the body mass index (BMI) greater than 30 is also conditioned by social relations. This theory, which until now could be sensed, is now based. The key to discovering the work is that people who are overweight are joined by personal ties beyond the family, which certifies that the problem is not just clinical or genetic or family habits. The obesity problem is also social.

Tell me who you ...

The percentage of risk shoots up to 171% if the friendship is the best friends

The proverb states that a good cuddle ensures good shade tree, and it is. The study points in this sense that there is greater attraction between the obese, but the fact that obesity is contagious, spread among the gang, among a group of friends. This question makes it clear that it should try to improve the environmental reasons and to control the genetic causes in the fight against obesity, but can also be convenient to group treatment of this chronic disease.

Awareness is more lax if collective and this is reinforced in adolescence, when the gang is the most important core of self-assertion. Friends are crucial to the point, the study shows that the percentage increases the chance of obesity among friends is 57%. The number shoots up to 171% if the friendship is the best of friends. However, the relationship affects only 37%. Also the possibility of a greater BMI increases up to 40% if the obese person is the brother.

... And tell you what you eat

There are unhealthy trends in the diet of children and adolescents are common and shared among friends or imitated. On the one hand, some parents encourage children to every day, or nearly all, would buy breakfast rolls, cereals or chocolate-filled cookies that class breakfast or friends of the gang. Even lunch prefer the chocolate bun or eat their friends in the playground of the school.

It is common among adolescents take hours off between classes to buy pastries, sweets or salty snacks like potato chips or the like, and sometimes they serve lunch. Also noteworthy are friendships with preferences and tastes for unhealthy food, although very marked taste, who are just impose fill the menu of dinners and celebrations with pizzas, fries, sodas, snacks and desserts.

However, as research evidence, friendships have a positive side, and also that good habits are contagious.

A friend can help you lose weight

If the risk is social, the solution can also be

Hill scientist is not to disdain it and point to know the impact that a friendship can have on weight is an opportunity. If the risk is social, he argues, the solution also can be and, therefore, interventions to combat the epidemic of obesity may experience an improvement in the cost-effectiveness, since the improvement of a person extends his circle.

Although the study did not seek it, concluded that while obesity is contagious, healthy weight (normal weight), too. If a class in a school takes the importance of healthy eating and exercise, and if each of its members accepts and looks, this inertia is contagious and community. The next step is to harness this phenomenon and implement preventive strategies and interventions that maximize the positive effects take hold and replicate between social ties.

STUDIES ON OBESITY

Admitted as an epidemic by the World Health Organization, obesity is concerned and takes every day. The impact on health, its relationship with diseases such as diabetes and lower welfare have led to more studies, strategies and actions from the institutions to correct the trend. There are all kinds and offer insight into the scale, risk and global involvement that reaches obesity.

Some studies related to the metabolic syndrome , with cognitive impairment and even with dementia and lower quantity and quality of semen , among many other problems and diseases.

Investigators look for causes and found, among other factors, junk food , the danger of high-calorie diets , the C-reactive protein, a biomarker of inflammation and tissue damage or genes that inhibit the sensation of satiety.

Although the causes and factors that increase the risk of a BMI over 30 (understood as obesity) are varied, contradictory, and many also have concluded that the pairing food and exercise is an effective and safe to avoid being obese.