Obesity linked to bad sexual health: French Study

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 17 2010

With economic development and fast changing lifestyles obesity is rapidly becoming a huge problem worldwide. Obesity is implicated in multiple disorders like diabetes, heart disease and arthritis to name but a few. Now French researchers have found a link between obesity and bad sexual health in their study of 12,364 men and women aged 18 to 69 ranging from normal weight to obese who lived in France in 2006. They found that sexual activity markedly declined with increasing weight and more unsafe sex was practiced by the obese and overweight. The study appeared in the online edition of the acclaimed British Medical Journal, BMJ.

The research director at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Medicale in Paris, Professor Nathalie Bajos and her colleagues found some surprising statistics in their study.

They found that single obese woman were more likely to have an unplanned pregnancy although their chances of having a sexual partner in the past year was 30% less than normal weight women. She found that obese women were 70% less likely to use oral contraceptive measures and eight times more likely to use less effective methods, such as withdrawal or coitus interruptus. They are less likely to seek contraceptive advise says the study. Obese women are five times more likely to meet their sexual partner on the internet and have an obese partner. Sexually transmitted disease and sexual dysfunction was seen equally among women of all weights.

Obese men on the other hand had 70% less chance of having more than one sexual partner in a year’s time, and were 2 and 1/2 times more likely to struggle with erectile dysfunction. They got sexually transmitted disease more than normal weight men in the last five years and were less likely to use condoms in the past one year.

There have been earlier reports connecting obesity and erectile dysfunction. This study brings to notice the rise of unplanned pregnancies in obese women. Bajos and her team said their findings have significant public health implications. They write, “The scale of the problem and the magnitude of the effects (particularly the fourfold increase in risk of unintended pregnancy among obese women) warrants focused attention…In terms of targeting advice and care, a considerable proportion of the population is obese, is easily identified as such, and is at increased risk in terms of poorer sexual health status.” “Obesity is emerging as one of the fastest-growing pandemics in modern times. The current economic downturn might lead to reduced nutritional quality and physical activity, further increasing the prevalence of obesity and related health costs in the coming years,” the authors write. However they also say that these results may not reflect the status outside France and more international studies are warranted to get an in-depth look into the association.

The journal editorial also focused on this issue. Sandy Goldbeck-Wood, an associate specialist in psychosexual medicine at Ipswich Hospital in the U.K wrote, “We need to understand more about how obese people feel about their sex lives, and what drives the observed behaviors and attitudes…In public health terms, the study lends a new slant to a familiar message: that obesity can harm not only health and longevity, but your sex life. And culturally, it reminds us as clinicians and researchers to look at the subjects we find difficult.”