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Is obesity socially contagious? AP news 7/25/07

If your friends and family get fat, chances are you will too, researchers report in a startling new federally funded study that suggests obesity is "socially contagious" and can spread easily from person to person.

Social ties seemed to play a surprisingly strong role, even more than genes are known to do. The study found a person's chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled.
"We were stunned to find that friends who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person's weight status as friends who are right next door," said co-author James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego.
The study was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the National Institute on Aging.
I suspect there exists a kind of social exchange conducted between individuals close to one another even where they are separated by distance. Obesity may be a symptom. Personal space of each can keep in touch with one another that may explain the psychic phenomenon like telepathy. In the absence of sufficient researches done or data available to us one has to take this as merely a possibility and nothing more.
benny