Social Relationships and Obesity: Benefits of Incorporating a Lifecourse Perspective

Abstract

Social networks reflect the structure of our interpersonal relationships. The effect of social networks on health is a topic of growing interest, particularly in an increasingly connected world. This review provides an overview of how social relations shape obesity risk and the effectiveness of network-based obesity interventions across the life course. The review highlights that, while the literature suggests obesity and related health behaviors are similar between socially-connected individuals, why this is the case and how to effectively intervene remains unclear. In addition, the review outlines methodological gaps limiting our understanding of how social networks shape obesity risk throughout the lifecourse. Several implications for obesity prevention and research are offered, including the need to examine the relationship of social networks and obesity across rather than within life-course stages, continued development of statistical social network analysis methods and the need for new cohort studies, particularly among children and the elderly.

Incident Type 2 Diabetes Risk is Influenced by Obesity and Diabetes in Social Contacts: a Social Network Analysis

“…Furthermore, prevention interventions designed to target a high-risk person and his or her social network members jointly may prove efficacious. 10,30,31 Given the difficulty of behavior change for T2D prevention, our work suggests that social and familial context might be important considerations in the ongoing search for effective and practical diabetes and obesity prevention strategies. Finally, if common genetic variant tests for T2D are useful, they could be combined with social contact trait information to identify people most likely to benefit from social network-based prevention strategies.…”

“…The last decade has seen rapid progress in the identification of how social relationships contribute to a variety of weight-related health behaviors, [1][2][3][4][5][6] body weight, [7][8][9][10] and chronic disease status. 11,12 This research shows that attributes or behaviors of the people in one's social network can serve as important determinants of one's own health.…”

Strategies Men Use to Cope with Stress Caused by Severe Obesity: A Qualitative Study

“…He constantly estimates how others are evaluating him and this too influences his behavior. His self-concept is based on perceptions of the response of others or internalization of others' judgments and it dif-fers in the different life stages and according to the severity of the problem (Castonguay 2015;Pachucki and Goodman 2015).…”

“…The context in which these processes unfold may also have had an influence. It may coincide with a critical period in an individual's life (Pachucki and Goodman 2015).…”

“…The obesity 'epidemic' is one of the most persistent contemporary public health problems prevalent today (Pachucki and Goodman 2015). According to the World Health Organization, obesity is indicated by a BMI greater than 30kg/ m², whereas when the BMI is greater than 40kg/ m², obesity is qualified as morbid (Taylor et al 2013).…”