Gaining Weight as Friends, and Maybe Losing It Too(1/2)

When one person gains weight, their close friends often follow. Researchers have just offered evidence in a study that says obesity appears to spread through social ties. But the findings might also offer hope. If friends help make obesity acceptable, then they might also be influential in losing the fat.

The researchers note that support groups are already an effective tool in dealing with other socially influenced problems, like alcoholism. The findings appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers used information collected from 12,000 people. It was collected between 1971 and 2003 as part of the Framingham Heart Study.

The information was highly detailed. There was even contact information for close friends of the people in the study. The researchers examined more than 40,000 social ties. They found that a person's chances of becoming severely overweight increased by 57% if a friend had become obese.

A sister or brother of a person who became obese had a 40% increased chance of becoming obese. The risk for a wife or husband was a little less than that.