Is Obesity Contageous?

According to a website on obesity "a new analysis from James Fowler at the University of California in San Diego and Nicholas Christakis at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts...suggests that the spread of social norms rather than just behavioral changes might explain the rise in obesity." Basically saying if you hang out with an obese person, you're doomed to spread. While eating habits are a learned behavior passed down from parent to child, it may also be true of friend to friend. Does that mean if you start eating really healthy that your friends will too? I can tell you from experience that that just doesn't happen.

Being a Natural Health Consultant and Nutritionist people watch what I eat. Probably more than I do. But that doesn't mean they eat like I do. In fact I've been called pretty names like "buzz kill" and "downer" because I've frowned upon the mass quantities of fast foods my friends eat. Junk foods like pizza, chips, soda, and kababs are all considered 'comfort foods' and people are drawn to them for how they make them feel emotionally. They don't realize the harm it's doing to them physically and will gladly disregard the pounds of weight they put on or the constant illnesses they have to fight off because of how that food makes them feel. Even when told that there is a correlation and it can easily be remedied by avoiding unhealthy foods, they still don't change.

Another website states "Obesity can be "caught" as easily as a common cold from other people's coughs, sneezes and dirty hands.." and "The condition has been linked to a highly-infectious virus which causes sniffles and sore throats..." Sniffles, sore throats, then weight gain? This has to be on Fox News. Oh wait, it is!! Yup that's right folks, you can get fat from being next to a person with the fat virus. Even though 11% of the people tested were thin and had the virus. Why weren't they gaining weight?

I'm going to give you a little lesson on the human body. When we eat something that is bad for us, ie we're allergic to it, we develop this condition called inflammation. Inflammation causes the immune system to go into overdrive attacking our own body. When that happens we can develop autoimmune diseases but more importantly, we can't fight off offending bugs like viruses and bacteria. Another symptom of food allergy inflammation is weight gain. We eat what our body can't process, we get fat. So how on God's green earth do they get that the virus itself causes weight gain, much less obesity?

Face it people, there is no excuse for gaining weight other than a stagnant lifestyle, poor eating habits and an unhealthy body. If you're body is unhealthy, change it. Read my post about the A,B,C, and D's of Health and start from the beginning. Losing weight should be a by-product of a healthy lifestyle, not the main focus.