{"id":462,"date":"2010-05-11T11:10:13","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T15:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/obesity-network.html"},"modified":"2010-05-11T11:10:13","modified_gmt":"2010-05-11T15:10:13","slug":"obesity-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/obesity-network.html","title":{"rendered":"Obesity Network"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\n‘A subset of the\u201cobesity network\u201d mapped by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler\n…\nEach dot, or \u201cnode,\u201d represents one person (red borders indicate women; blue, men).The yellow dots represent obese people\u2014those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more\u2014and node sizes are proportional to BMI. Colors of \u201cties,\u201d or links between nodes, indicate relationship type: purple for friend or spouse, orange for family. Note the visible clusters of obese people….’\n<\/small>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td><\/tr><\/table>\nElizabeth Gudrais writes in Harvard Magazine about\n Networked —\nExploring the weblike structures that underlie everything from friendship to cellular behavior<\/a>:\n
\nThe two men started publishing their findings with a splash: a 2007 article in the New England Journal of Medicine reporting that obesity spreads through social networks, as people are apparently influenced by friends\u2019 weight gain to become obese themselves. More perplexing is their finding that obesity spreads through up to three degrees of separation. If a subject named a friend who was also in the study, and that friend\u2019s friend became obese, the first subject\u2019s chances of becoming obese were roughly 20 percent greater. Across one more degree of influence (husband\u2019s friend\u2019s friend or friend\u2019s sibling\u2019s friend\u2014i.e., three degrees away), the risk was 10 percent greater. Weight gain appears to ripple through friend groups via some unseen mechanism such as altered eating or exercise behavior, or adjustment of social norms regarding weight.\n

\nThe authors found similar patterns for happiness, loneliness, depression, alcohol consumption, the decision to stop smoking, and even divorce. \u201cOur health depends on more than our own biology or even our own choices and actions,\u201d they write in Connected. \u201cOur health also depends quite literally on the biology, choices, and actions of those around us.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nWe are our brother’s keeper, and our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, children, friends, colleagues, and neighbors are our keepers.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘A subset of the\u201cobesity network\u201d mapped by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler … Each dot, or \u201cnode,\u201d represents one person (red borders indicate women; blue, men).The yellow dots represent obese people\u2014those with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more\u2014and node sizes are proportional to BMI. Colors of \u201cties,\u201d or links between nodes, indicate […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[42,44,73],"tags":[1505,1509,1502,1504,1508,1511,692,1210,1507,1503,1501,1506,931,1492,1512,1513,1510],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-and-drink","category-health","category-science","tag-broker","tag-brothers-keeper","tag-connected","tag-connector","tag-degrees","tag-exercise","tag-freedom-2","tag-harvard","tag-james-h-fowler","tag-network-science","tag-networked","tag-nicholas-christakis","tag-obesity","tag-obesity-network","tag-social-norms","tag-weight","tag-weight-gain"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-7s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}