A fight can make you fat: study

LONDON — Blis­ter­ing mar­i­tal rows can lead to peo­ple pil­ing on the pounds, ac­cord­ing to a study.

Re­searchers found that fierce ar­gu­ments with a spouse were able to al­ter how the body pro­cesses high-fat foods and in­crease the risk of obe­sity in adults.

Men and women with a his­tory of de­pres­sion who had es­pe­cially heated ar­gu­ments burned fewer calo­ries after a meal than less ar­gu­men­ta­tive cou­ples.

The re­duc­tion in calo­ries burned could trans­late to gain­ing 12lb (5.4kg) a year.

Th­ese cou­ples also had higher lev­els of in­sulin, which con­trib­utes to the stor­age of fat, and triglyc­erides – a form of fat in the blood – after eat­ing a heavy meal.

Lead re­searcher Pro­fes­sor Jan Kiecolt-glaser, from Ohio State Univer­sity, said the study backs up her pre­vi­ous re­search, which found that women who are stressed put on weight be­cause their metabolism slows down, burn­ing 100 fewer calo­ries a day.

She said: “Th­ese find­ings not only iden­tify how chronic stres­sors can lead to obe­sity, but also point to how im­por­tant it is to treat mood dis­or­ders. In­ter­ven­tions for men­tal health clearly

could ben­e­fit phys­i­cal health as well.”

The re­searchers re­cruited 43 healthy cou­ples, ages 24 to 61, who had been mar­ried for at least three years.

Dur­ing the study, all par­tic­i­pants ate a meal of 930 calo­ries and 60 grams of fat, de­signed to mimic common fast-food op­tions, with roughly the calo­ries and fat in a Burger King dou­ble whopper with cheese or a McDon­ald’s Big Mac and medium fries.

Two hours later the cou­ples were asked to dis­cuss and try to re­solve one or more is­sues that re­searchers had pre­vi­ously judged to be most likely to pro­duce con­flict. Common top­ics were money, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and their in­laws.

Blood sam­ples showed that par­tic­i­pants with both a mood disorder and a hos­tile mar­riage burned an av­er­age of 31 fewer calo­ries per hour than those cou­ples who had fewer ar­gu­ments. Pro­fes­sor Kiecolt-glaser added: “Our re­sults prob­a­bly un­der­es­ti­mate the health risks be­cause the ef­fects of only one meal were an­a­lysed. Most peo­ple eat ev­ery four to five hours, and of­ten dine with their spouses. “Meals pro­vide prime op­por­tu­ni­ties for on­go­ing dis­agree­ments in a trou­bled mar­riage, so there could be a long-stand­ing pat­tern of meta­bolic dam­age stem­ming from hos­til­ity and de­pres­sion.”

—- Daily Mail

Fierce ar­gu­ments with a spouse were able to al­ter how the body pro­cesses high-fat foods and in­crease the risk of obe­sity in adults