‘Osmosis Effect’ Obesity is contagious

Date Line July 26, 2007

Well, a new Harvard Study. Why is it always a Harvard Study that makes the news, and important pronouncements? Don’t you wish your kids went there; went where all the intelligent people seem to be?

Anywho, the news appears to be that Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus. Seems wise to pick thin friend, or hand with those who do not gain weight.

The study was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and covers twelve thousand people over a period of thirty-two years; no question it has the data to support the finding.

Not that the finding should come as a surprise. Not when considered it in terms of other ‘osmosis’ effects which are well documented. OK, the term ‘Osmosis Effect’ is mine; at least I think I just coined it.

‘Osmosis Effect’ is not mentioned in the study, or any other studies I am aware of; but it is a good term. When women live together is close proximity, or are close friends, they tend to bring their menstrual cycles into synchronicity; they bleed together.

The ‘Osmosis Effect’ for obesity is fifty-seven percent. The ‘Osmosis Effect’ for close friends, even when separated by great distances, is one hundred seventy-one percent. If that dear friend in California gets fat, it will not save you to be in New York; you’ll gain weight.

Interestingly, the reverse is also true. Let a close friend lose weight and you will find your own weight falling. The researchers refer to this as a form of ‘social cognition’ which, by their hypothesis, is based on psychological changes toward acceptance and rejection of excess weight. I prefer my ‘Osmosis Effect.’

What has this new study shown? Well, we know of husbands who experience sympathetic pregnancy along with the real pregnancy of their wife. We know of the menstrual synchronicity changes. How can we examine these? How can we explain them? ‘Osmosis Effect.’

What would be interesting is to see what factors can be controlled. For example, Downeast Maine women are known for their obesity, for, as the joke goes, being shade in the summer and warmth in the winter.

Just imagine what would happen if a community, or a county, were used for a study on weight control. Would the friendship networks reveal themselves in random weight changes experienced by the study participants? How could such a study be structured?

America is an obese nation. Did that have an effect on the study? Is it just a matter of normal aging and the generally poor diet of Americans; a diet which has gotten seriously worse of the period of the study?

Are we moving in a direction where we see without seeing? Where the causal effects are not associated with the constraints of our studies?

Or are we headed towards recognizing the broad implications of the ‘Osmosis Effect’? That we tend to drift into a common attitude and behavioral pattern which evidences itself in our physiology and quite possibly in our psychology?

Obviously I am a believer in the ‘Osmosis Effect’ and that of an imposed behavioral shift which has resulted in the acceptance of George W Bush and the Right-wing Evangelical nonsense which threatens to destroy this nation. Ah the humour of it.
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