Weight loss surgery can affect interpersonal relationships, a Swedish report suggests.
Researchers found that compared to people who didn’t have so-called bariatric surgery, those who did were more likely to become separated or divorced, if they were married, and more likely to get into a new relationship or get married, if they had been single.
Coauthor Per-Arne Svensson of Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg told Reuters Health that the effects of weight-loss surgery extend beyond just losing pounds or kilos.
Svensson’s team looked at data from two large studies of people who did or did not have weight-loss operations. Seventy to 75% of participants were women. The first study compared 1,958 obese patients who had bariatric surgery with 1,912 who did not.
Overall, 999 participants were single at the start. In this group, four years later, nearly 21% of those who had surgery had gotten married or started a new relationship, compared with roughly 11% of those who didn’t have surgery. Ten years later, rates of marriage or new relationships were nearly 35% in the surgery group and 19% in the no-surgery group.
Among patients who were married, the rate of divorce or separation after four years was about 9% in the surgery group compared with 6% in the control group. After 10 years, it was about 17% in the surgery group and about 12% in the other group.
The second study compared 29,234 obese individuals who had weight loss surgery and 283,748 individuals in the general population. The unmarried people who had weight-loss surgery were 35% more likely to get married, and surgery patients who were married were 41% more likely to get divorced.
The authors reported in JAMA Surgery: “Within the surgery groups, changes in relationship status were more common in those with larger weight loss,”
Dr. Samer Mattar, president of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery and Medical Director, Swedish Weight Loss Services in Seattle, Washington, who was not involved with the study, told Reuters Health: “Weight loss surgeries result in a re-calibration of relationships, with patients realizing that they can indeed get out of unhappy relationships and/or initiate new healthy ones,”
In both studies, everyone lived in Sweden. “It is unknown if the results can be generalized to other countries and cultures,” the authors noted.
