Your Stressed Partner Could be Making You Fat, Study Suggests

Sharon Moore November 07, 2016

Your partner’s stress level may not only be affecting your emotional health. It could also be affecting your waistline, a new study suggests.

The study involved 2,042 married individuals from the nationally longitudinal Health and Retirement Study at the U-M Institute for Social Research. Participants completed questions about their waist circumference, negative marriage quality, stress levels and other factors in 2006 and 2010. These couples were married for an average of 34 years.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that spouses tend to gain weight when their other half is stressed out. Women are most affected by their partner’s stress levels. By the end of the study, 70 per cent of wives had a higher risk of developing weight-related illnesses.

Men also experienced weight gain when their spouses are stressed out. But the effect is not as strong as it is on women.

The researchers warned that the trend is widespread among those over 50, and could lead to obesity.

Surprisingly, lower negative quality ties reported by wives exacerbated the effect of wife stress on husbands’ waist circumference, according to Kira Birditt, a research associate professor at ISR’s Survey Research Centre.

’The stress experienced by partners, and not the individual’s stress, was associated with increased waist circumference. This effect of stress was even stronger in particular spousal relationships.’ she added.

Researchers said the study does not address what to do to lessen stress.

However, other findings indicate that it’s important for couples to cope with stress together, and that goals created by a couple can be more effective than goals created individually.

’We can only assume that this may translate into health effects, although they are probably not as strong on younger, often healthier, samples,’

The new study was published in Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

Source of this article:

Why YOU get fat when your partner is stressed out

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