Heavier Friends Might Widen Your Waistline: Study

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THURSDAY, July 12 (HealthDay News) -- Worried about the battle of the bulge? Your circle of friends might be key to your weight gain, a new study suggests.

The research, conducted among high school students, found that teens were more likely to pile on the pounds if they hung out with people who were already heavier than they were. The opposite was true for students whose friends were thinner, however.

The researchers say the findings might help experts combat obesity, at least among teenagers.

"These results can help us develop better interventions to prevent obesity. We should not be treating adolescents in isolation," study author David Shoham, an assistant professor in the department of preventive medicine and epidemiology of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, said in a Loyola news release.

In conducting the observational study, the researchers were trying to figure out if obesity clusters in groups of friends due to social influences (when friends influence one another) or if people simply seek out the friendship of people who are most similar to themselves, including weight status.

To answer this question, the researchers examined information previously collected from students at two large high schools over the course of two school years. One school, known as Jefferson High, was located in a rural area and had a mostly white student population. The second school, called Sunshine High, was located in a city and had a more racial and ethnically diverse student body.

The researchers applied a statistical technique to analyze survey responses from more than 600 students from Jefferson High and 1,151 students from Sunshine High. The teens were asked about their weight, friends, sports and the amount of time they spent in front of the TV or computer or playing video games. The researchers also calculated the students' body mass index (a measure of height and weight).

The way that students initially chose their friends did play a role in how obesity clustered within social groupings. The researchers pointed out, however, that even after taking this finding into account there was still a significant link between obesity and a student's circle of friends, suggesting that friend-to-friend influences might also be key.

For example, a Jefferson High student with thin friends had a 40 percent chance of losing weight and a 27 percent chance of gaining weight. On the other hand, the researchers found a student who was close to being overweight and had obese friends had only a 15 percent chance of losing weight but a 56 percent chance of gaining more weight.

The bottom line: A person's social networks must be taken into consideration when developing strategies to prevent or treat obesity among teenagers, the researchers said.

Shoham's team said the study was limited by its reliance on self-reported data and the inability to directly test how friendships are formed and maintained. They added that the study's data were also collected more than a decade ago -- before the advent of Facebook and the sharp rise in rates of childhood obesity.

Since it is observational in nature, the study can only show an association between friends and weight gain; it cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship. And, "of course, no one study should ever be taken as conclusive and our future work will attempt to address many of these limitations," Shoham said.

The study was published recently in the journal PLoS ONE.

-- Mary Elizabeth Dallas Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved. SOURCE: Loyola University, news release, July 9, 2012

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Vigorous Exercise Might Protect Against Psoriasis

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Women who engage in vigorous activities like running or aerobic exercise may have reduced risk of psoriasis


May 23, 2012 -- Here's yet another reason to exercise: A new study suggests that vigorous physical activity could reduce the risk of psoriasis.
The findings come out of the long-running Nurses' Health Study, which includes only women, but previous research suggests that exercise may also protect men against the chronic skin condition, characterized mostly by inflamed, scaly patches.
As many as 7.5 million Americans have psoriasis, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation, which says it's the most common autoimmune disease. Men and women are equally affected. Previous research has linked higher body mass index, or BMI, family history of psoriasis, alcohol use, and smoking to the risk of psoriasis.
In the new study, scientists followed nearly 87,000 female nurses for 14 years. None of them had been diagnosed with psoriasis at the beginning of the study. Over the course of the study, the nurses completed three detailed questionnaires about physical activity and were asked to report whether they were ever diagnosed with psoriasis. A total of 1,026 women said they were diagnosed during the study period and provided survey information about their physical activity.

Compared with no vigorous physical activity, vigorous exercise -- the equivalent of 105 minutes of running at a 6-mile-per-hour pace every week -- was associated with a 25% to 30% lower risk of psoriasis. The association remained significant after accounting for BMI, age, smoking, and alcohol use. The researchers say theirs is the first study to investigate the independent association between physical activity and psoriasis.
"The intensity of the exercise is the key," says researcher Abrar Qureshi, MD, MPH, vice chair of dermatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
Only running and performing aerobic exercise or calisthenics were associated with a reduced risk of psoriasis. Other vigorous activities, such as jogging, playing tennis, swimming, and bicycling, were not. The researchers speculate that the highly variable intensity of the latter group of activities might account for the lack of an association with a lower psoriasis risk.
More than a decade ago, Siba Raychaudhuri, MD, reported that male and female psoriasis patients who exercised were likely to have less severe disease. "Walking was protective also," says Raychaudhuri, a rheumatologist at the University of California, Davis. He says he was "a little bit surprised" that Qureshi did not find that to be the case but added that "this study is more elegant than ours" because it collected more detailed information about exercise intensity.
Qureshi's team speculates that the lower risk of psoriasis in women who exercised vigorously might be due to a reduction in system-wide inflammation. Vigorous exercise also might be protective against psoriasis because it decreases anxiety and stress, which are tied to new cases and exacerbations of the disease, the researchers say.
"A good amount of data show that emotional stress reduction is good for psoriasis reduction," Raychaudhuri says.
Exposure to ultraviolet light is a psoriasis treatment, so time spent outdoors exercising, and not the exercise itself, might have explained the lowered risk of the disease, Qureshi says. But his study found that women who ran for only an hour a week had a significantly reduced risk of developing psoriasis than women who spent at least four hours walking outside at an average pace.
Chris Ritchlin, MD, MPH, a University of Rochester rheumatologist, calls Qureshi's findings "very interesting." Still, Ritchlin says, while exercise is known to be associated with reduced inflammation, "is there something about people who are really athletically inclined that we're not thinking about that would prevent them from getting psoriasis?"
Qureshi says that could be the case, which is why his study needs to be replicated. "You have to interpret the results cautiously because it is a single study," he says. "It is certainly possible that the women who exercise more are just more health-conscious. There could be other factors that could protect them from developing psoriasis."
Qureshi's study appears online in the Archives of Dermatology.
SOURCES: Qureshi, A. Archives of Dermatology, published online May 2012.Abrar Qureshi, MD, MPH, vice chair of dermatology at Brigham and Women's Hospital; assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, Boston.Siba Raychaudhuri, MD, University of California, Davis.Chris Ritchlin, MD, MPH, University of Rochester, New York.