A new study suggests that marriage significantly increases the risk of obesity in men.
While both men and women tend to gain weight after marriage, the effect is more pronounced in men. Married men are 3.2 times more likely to be classified as obese than their unmarried counterparts, whereas women’s risk of being overweight rises by 39% and men’s by 62% compared to unmarried couples.
However, this trend is not as evident in women, which researchers attribute to societal stigma surrounding female obesity. Dr. Alicja Cicha-Mikolajczyk from Warsaw’s National Institute of Cardiology noted that women are more likely to take action to lose weight, as they find it harder to accept living with obesity.
The study, which analyzed data from 2,405 Polish individuals around the age of 50, also found that aging increases the likelihood of weight gain. Each additional year raises the risk of being overweight by 3% in men and 4% in women, while the risk of obesity increases by 4% in men and 6% in women.
Interestingly, factors like depression and poor health knowledge significantly impacted obesity risk in women but had no such effect on men. The researchers concluded that age and marital status play a crucial role in adult obesity, and better health education could help address this growing issue.
The findings will be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Spain in May.
