A new study has shown that not only is obesity damaging health-wise, but it also seems to have a strong negative impact on sexual behaviour.
French researchers have shown that women who are obese are less likely to ask for advice on contraception or use the pill. They were also more likely to have unplanned pregnancies, despite having fewer sexual partners than those who did not have weight problems. The rate of unplanned pregnancies was 4 times higher amongst obese women than in the rest of the group. Obese women when compared to the women of normal weight were 30% less likely to have had a sexual partner over the past year.
Men who were obese reported a higher incidence of erectile dysfunction. However though they were engaging in sexual contact less, they were more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease.
Overall, data was collected on the sexual behaviour of over 12,000 French men and women. From this group, 1010 women and 1488 men were overweight and 411 women and 350 men were obese.
Lead researcher Nathalie Bajos, research director at Paris’ National Institute of Health and Medical Research and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that obesity strongly influenced people’s sex lives.
She said that the research had revealed that social stigma meant obese women were more likely to find sexual partners online, as they were ‘not comfortable meeting men through friends, through work, through parties’.
She also noted that doctors were less likely to prescribe and discuss contraception with the women.
Dr. Sandy Goldbeck Wood, who wrote the accompanying editorial in the British Medical Journal , urged that the data be treated with cautious interpretation. She said that more needed to be understood about how obese people feel about their sex lives, though the complex biological, psychological and social factors would require a qualitative research approach.