Obesity can spread through a friend network by association
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The importance of real social connections was made really obvious by a famous study of data collected over the last few decades in the US town of Framingham. This is one of the most studied towns on earth, with a number of studies following tens of thousands of people over decades. These people have regular visits to their GP to get poked and prodded, they answer regular questions about their health and wellbeing, and are followed up over decades to see what impacts their lifestyles have on measures such as chronic disease. One of the studies from this cohort found that blood pressure has a significant impact on your risk of developing heart disease. Another study from Framingham showed that obesity ‘spreads’ in a social network – if one of more of your friends becomes obese, it significantly increases your risk of becoming obese yourself in the next six months. Interestingly, this study did not find the same effect within families, showing that your friendship groups affect you the most.