Obesity has been a hot topic for the past decade or so. Studies have been performed across the nation about it and its connections with other conditions or statistics. But this is the first time I’ve seen a study investigating obesity and its links with sex.

A new study shows findings that obese individuals tend to have fewer sexual partners than their healthy-weight counterparts. Obese women also seem to be at an increased risk of unplanned pregnancies, according to the study.

The study’s findings were published in the British Medical Journal. Nathalie Bajos, PhD, from the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, notes, “Our hypothesis was that overweight individuals, especially obese people, could be at greater risk of negative sexual outcomes compared with normal weight individuals because of social stigma and lack of adequate medical follow-up.”

Makes rational sense to me…but how do you go about performing a study such as this one?

The study included 5535 women and 4635 men between 18 and 69 years old that were surveyed in 2006.

Of the group, 1010 women and 1488 men were overweight, and only 411 women and 350 men were obese.

From this group, it was shown that normal-weight women were more likely than obese women to report having any sexual partners in the past 12 months. For the boys, normal-weight men were more likely than obese men to report having more than one sexual partner within the past 12 months.

Editorialist Sandy Goldbeck-Wood, MB, stated that the most interesting finding of the study was that obese women between 18 and 29 years old were less likely to report using oral contraception in the past year; also, they were 4.3 times more likely to have unplanned pregnancies than normal-weight women.

In conclusion, Golbeck-Wood states, “In public health terms, the study lends a new slant to a familiar message: that obesity can harm not only health and longevity, but your sex life. And culturally, it reminds us as clinicians and researchers to look at the subjects we find difficult.”