Your health is no exception. Your environment shapes your health more than you may realize.
Today, we will explore how much your environment, friends, and coworkers can impact your health and, most importantly, what you can do about it.
What is normal?
What we eat, how often we go to the gym, and even our daily routines feel extremely individualized. However, we don't make those decisions in a vacuum.
Our environment plays an equally - if not more - powerful role in shaping health outcomes.
Your parents, friends, peers, and coworkers' health habits all shape your perspective.
They shape your version of what is normal.
The meals you ate growing up, the activities your friends enjoy, and the type of workspace your coworkers create all mold what's 'normal' to you.
This influence of 'normal' affects your level of physical activity, eating habits, and your overall approach to wellness.
Obesity is socially contagious: Here's what the data shows:
In 2007, researchers published a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine that followed over 12,000 people for 32 years. What they found was shocking:
• If a close friend became obese, your risk of becoming obese increased by 57%.
• If a sibling became obese, your risk increased by 40%.
• If a spouse became obese, your risk increased by 37%.
Surprisingly, this effect occurred even when people lived far apart. This wasn’t about sharing the same fridge. It was shared norms.
What researchers concluded was simple but not obvious: our behaviors - and even our perception of what’s “normal” - spread through social networks.
Health is contagious, and so is unhealthy behavior.
The bottom line: Be the change. Awareness is the first step.
Have the intellectual honesty to examine your environment and ask:
• What behaviors are normalized around me?
• What foods are constantly available?
• How often do the people around me exercise?
• What narratives are repeated about health?
I want to be clear: the solution isn't about blaming or assigning fault to others.
At the end of the day, there are multiple factors in your control.
The data strongly suggest that obesity is socially contagious; conversely, the opposite is also true.
Witnessing friends, family members, and coworkers exercising and eating well increases the likelihood that others will follow suit.
So what's the takeaway? Be the change.
You can be the friend, the family member, the coworker who starts to shift the curve in the positive direction.
Be the reason others make choices towards a healthier, happier life.
