Overweight Women
More Likely To Report Ever Having Sex
With A Man
November 3 2008
Researchers in the US found that women who were overweight were more
likely to report
ever having sexual intercourse with a man, but apart from that
women's sexual behavior did not
vary by body mass index.
The study was by researchers at the Department of Obstetrics and
Gynecology, University of
Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, and other research centres in the
US and is published in the journal
Obstetrics & Gynecology.
For the study, the researchers looked at data from the 2002 National
Survey of Family
Growth, which interviewed a nationally representative cross section
of women aged 15 to 44
years regardless of reproductive health status. The
height and weight measures were also self-
reported.
The researchers looked at the links between body mass index and a number
of sexual
behavior measures, including orientation, age at first intercourse,
ever having had sex with a
male partner, the number of partners and frequency of
intercourse. The sexual behavior was
categorized by body mass index (BMI) groups:
Normal (under 25 kg/m2), overweight (25 to
30 mg/m2) and obese (over 30 kg/m2).
The results showed that:
-
BMI was not
significantly linked to sexual orientation, age at first
intercourse, frequency of heterosexual intercourse, and the
number of lifetime or current male partners.
-
Overweight and obese
women were more likely to report ever having had sexual
intercourse with a male partner (p under 0.001).
-
92 per cent of
overweight women reported ever having had sexual intercourse
with a male partner compared with 87 per cent of women of
normal BMI.
-
This figure was
unaffected by adjustments for age and type of residence.
The
authors concluded that:
"With the exception of ever engaging in sexual intercourse with a man,
sexual behavior differs
little between women of different body mass indices."
Lead author Dr Bliss Kaneshiro an assistant professor at the University of
Hawaii told the
press that:
"These results were unexpected and we don't really know why this is the
case."
Kaneshiro first presented the results of this study at the American
College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists (ACOG) 56th Annual Clinical Meeting in May
this year where she won first
prize for the paper.
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