“Supportive human relationships, particularly high-quality marital bonds, may regulate obesity risk through oxytocin-mediated alterations in brain and gut pathways.” This is the bottom line on a fascinating exploration of the biological relationship between emotionally supportive marriages and obesity published this week in Gut Microbes.

This finding is not entirely a surprise. Nor is it the final word on this subject. Social ties have long been known to be influential for obesity risk. And the authors of this study are quite clear that their research adds insights into potential mechanisms for a relationship between emotionally supportive marriages and obesity. But, they explain, “its cross-sectional design necessitates further research to establish causal relationships.”

So catchy headlines about marriage rewiring the signals between our guts and our brains might be more than a little misleading.

Marriage and Emotional Support

In their study, Xiaobei Zhang and colleagues found that marital status and perceived emotional support interact and independently influence a relationship with a lower BMI through a range of potential influences on metabolic function and weight regulation. That range even included an assessment of differences in the gut microbiome and how it might influence signalling to parts of the brain involved in processing food cues and other influences on obesity. There is a lot here – so much, in fact, that it makes all the more sense to take these findings as a source of clues. Not final answers.

What’s Not To Like?

Still, we can’t really argue with the fundamental proposition here. An emotionally supportive marriage can do good things for a person’s health. Having just celebrated 43 years of it, we’re all in.

Click here for the study, here, here, here, and here for further perspective.

Couple in the Woods, painting by August Macke / WikiArt