A study conducted jointly by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, finds that obesity may be linked to poor sexual health. The researchers conducted a survey among 12,364 men and women living in France. Out of the sample, 411 women and 350 men were considered obese (defined as having a body mass index of over 30).
The researchers found that both men and women who are obese experience sexual health problems at a higher rate than people of average weight. However, the sexual health problems experienced by men and women seem in most cases to be different in nature.
Obese men have a greater risk of erectile dysfunction than men of average weight. Researchers believe that this is a direct result of the strain placed on the body’s systems by having a greater mass than it is adapted to support. However, obese women do not seem to have any trouble with comparable issues such as libido.
But women who are obese have their own risk factors tied to sexual health. Although the survey found that obese women have sex less often than women of average weight, they are also four times more likely to have an unwanted pregnancy. Even though obese women are thirty percent less likely to have had a sexual partner in the last year, the report found that they were also less likely to take an oral contraceptive or ask about birth control, thereby explaining the apparent contradiction.
Obese men, especially those in their 20s, were also found to be less likely to use contraceptives. This correlates with the likelihood that for men of average weight, obese men were ten times greater to contract a sexually transmitted disease, even though that in this demographic they were less likely to engage in sexual activity.
A specialist named Sandy Goldbeck-Wood who is a psycho-sexologist at the London Sexual Health Clinic wrote an editorial on the report arguing that doctors may be in some part at fault for failing to ask their obese patients questions about sexual health. She suggested that doctor’s embarrassment about their obese patient’s sexualities may result in failure to talk about important topics such as contraceptives and birth control, thereby resulting in many of the health problems found by the study.
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