Study: Obesity Risk May Run Higher in Families Plagued by Alcoholism
If you have an alcoholic parent or other family
member, you might tend to become obese, according to study findings
published in the Archives of General Psychiatry and reported by HealthDay News.
For
the study, researchers examined data from two huge U.S. alcoholism
surveys done 10 years apart. When scientists analyzed data from both
studies, results showed that men and women with a family history of
alcoholism were more prone to being obese.
But findings also
showed that women with this family background were 49 percent more
likely than their male counterparts to become obese.
What’s
more, researchers noted that the connection between a family history of
alcoholism and obesity had strengthened over time.
Why? Because
more high-calorie foods with sugar, salt and fat are available than in
the past—and these are the foods that the brain’s reward centers love,
said Richard A. Grucza, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
“Alcohol
and drugs affect those same parts of the brain,” Grucza said. “Our
thinking was that because the same brain structures are being
stimulated, overconsumption of those foods might be greater in people
with a predisposition to addiction.”
In addiction research,
whether the predisposition to one condition may also contribute to
others is called cross-heritability. The newest survey data not only
showed that alcoholism and obesity are cross-heritable, Grucza said,
but also suggested that the environment changed in the 10-year period
between studies.
What this means is that the higher risk of
obesity for people in families with alcoholism problems wasn’t purely
genetic. “Some of the risks must be a function of the environment,”
Grucza explained.
But a family history of alcoholism is not the only thing that may contribute to an increased risk of obesity. Click here for more about other drivers of this huge U.S. problem.
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