Perceived Neighbourhood Problems over Time and Associations with Adiposity

Abstract

There is growing interest in understanding which aspects of the local environment influence obesity. Using data from the longitudinal West of Scotland Twenty-07 study (n = 2040) we examined associations between residents’ self-reported neighbourhood problems, measured over a 13-year period, and nurse-measured body weight and size (body mass index, waist circumference, waist–hip ratio) and percentage body fat. We also explored whether particular measures such as abdominal obesity, postulated as a marker for stress, were more strongly related to neighbourhood conditions. Using life course models adjusted for sex, cohort, household social class, and health behaviours, we found that the accumulation of perceived neighbourhood problems was associated with percentage body fat. In cross-sectional analyses, the strongest relationships were found for contemporaneous measures of neighbourhood conditions and adiposity. When analyses were conducted separately by gender, perceived neighbourhood stressors were strongly associated with central obesity measures (waist circumference, waist–hip ratio) among both men and women. Our findings indicate that chronic neighbourhood stressors are associated with obesity. Neighbourhood environments are modifiable, and efforts should be directed towards improving deleterious local environments to reduce the prevalence of obesity.

Obesity and Urban Environments

“…Thus, Holtgrave and Crosby [35] report that multivariate linear regression showed social capital to be a predictor of both obesity and diabetes (explaining 10% of the variance in obesity and 44% of the variance in diabetes). A Scottish study [36] examined the effects on adiposity of cumulative exposures to adverse neighbourhood conditions (as reflected in adverse neighbourhood perceptions). They found stronger relationships for abdominal obesity and percentage body fat, and weaker relationships with BMI, in line with a mechanism in which prolonged stress activates the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and in turn leads to increased abdominal obesity.…”

More miles on the clock: Neighbourhood stressors are associated with telomere length in a longitudinal study

“…A similar suite of questions has been used in other UK studies including the General Household Survey and the Hereford Cohort Study [53, 54]. At each wave, to provide a more differentiated score on the perceived severity of the problems [55, 56], scores were revised so that ‘serious problem’ was given a score of one and ‘minor problem’ and ‘not a problem’ were each scored as zero. Responses to each of the individual problems were then summed, with scores ranging from 0 to 6 at each wave, with the higher score indicating greater problems in the neighbourhood.…”

Manipulating the exposome to enable better ageing

“…Social and geo-physical environments can be both salutogenic and pathogenic. Psychological stress imposed by a threatening social and geo-physical environment accelerates ageing processes and can lead to adiposity and associated sequelae of poor health, especially in women [ 55 ]. Pertinent to this, women also seem to bear a disproportionate effect of the stress of the current and past pandemics [ 56 ].…”

“…Secondly, it would create a more diverse environment for local wildlife. Furthermore, it would create a salutogenic environment that mitigates the loss of physiological resilience associated with exposome stress [ 55 , 71 ] and improve health span as a consequence.…”