Oh Heavily, Father: Churchgoers More Likely to Become Obese
Results from a new study suggest that churchgoing folks are consuming a little bit more than the spiritual weight of God’s good word [1]. Individuals who attend church frequently in young adulthood are significantly more likely to become obese in middle age, according to a new analysis of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study.
Presenting the results here this week at EPI|NPAM 2011, the Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention and Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism 2011 Conference, researchers say the news isn’t all doom and gloom, however.
“The upshot is that we know that religious people are less likely to smoke, more likely to have better physical and mental status, and more likely to live longer,” lead investigator Dr Matthew Feinstein (Northwestern University, Chicago, IL) told heartwire . “They’re doing a lot right in some areas, but there is room for improvement. There is also a lot of potential for effective initiatives to be implemented because religious organizations often have preexisting infrastructure and social support systems, which are key contributors to establishing effective health initiatives, like antiobesity initiatives.”
Last year, along with senior investigator Dr Donald Lloyd-Jones (Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL), Feinstein and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) cohort and showed that increased religious involvement, including more frequent prayer and meditation, was associated with a greater prevalence of obesity.
“Given that finding, we wanted to look earlier in adulthood in order to understand more about the longitudinal or temporal nature of this relationship,” said Feinstein.
The group analyzed religious involvement in 2433 male and female participants aged 20 to 32 years old in the CARDIA trial. Participation in religious services was defined as high (at least once weekly), medium (regular, but not weekly), low (rarely), or never. After approximately 18 years of follow-up, the investigators assessed the cardiovascular risk profile, including obesity, in the now–middle-aged participants, with middle age defined as between 38 and 50 years of age.
After adjustment for multiple variables, including age, race, sex, education, income, and baseline body-mass index, individuals with a high frequency of religious participation in young adulthood were 50% more likely than those with no religious participation to become obese by middle age.
One previous hypothesis for the increased rates of obesity among churchgoing individuals had been their lower rates of smoking. As smoking acts as an appetite suppressant and churchgoers smoke less frequently, this might have led to higher rates of obesity because they ate more. However, Feinstein and colleagues performed additional analyses that adjusted for smoking and still observed an association between religious participation and obesity, almost to the same degree. In addition, based on the MESA cross-sectional data, some had proposed that obese people were more likely to gravitate toward friends and support in religious communities. However, these new longitudinal data from CARDIA implies that this too is not the case.
“It’s tough to infer any causality from this, because we didn’t look at specific mechanisms,” said Feinstein. “One possible explanation, though, is that religious gatherings might center on eating traditional, high-calorie comfort food, and this in itself might contribute to the higher incidence and prevalence of obesity.”
The authors report no conflicts of interest
Source: by Michael O’Riordan at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/739698?sssdmh=dm1.676080&src=nldne
