Obese women tend to have more severe sexual disorder symptoms

A study of overweight and obese women of reproductive age in Poland found that they tend to experience more severe symptoms of sexual dysfunctions and sexual preference disorders compared to their normal-weight peers. Women with more severe sexuality-related disorders also tended to report a lower quality of life. The research was published in Psychiatria Polska.

Sexuality-related disorders include a range of conditions that affect sexual function, desire, and preference, causing distress or difficulties in intimate relationships. Sexual dysfunctions refer to problems occurring during any phase of the sexual response cycle—desire, arousal, orgasm, or resolution. In women, these include disorders such as female sexual interest/arousal disorder, genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder, and female orgasmic disorder.

In contrast, sexual preference disorders, often referred to in clinical settings as paraphilic disorders, involve atypical sexual interests that may cause harm or distress. Examples include fetishistic disorder, voyeuristic disorder, and sexual masochism disorder, although these conditions are rarer among women. Such conditions are only classified as disorders when they cause significant distress or impair functioning. Cultural, psychological, and relational factors play an important role in how these disorders manifest in women.

Study author Anna Fuksiewicz and her colleagues aimed to explore the frequency and severity of sexuality-related disorders in overweight and obese women, and to compare these findings to those in normal-weight women. They note that previous studies have found that 67% of individuals with excessive body weight report a reduced quality of sex life—a statistic that includes women.

The study included 95 women between 18 and 40 years of age. Among them, 51 had normal weight, 32 were classified as obese, and 12 were overweight. The average age of overweight and obese women was 25–26 years, while the average age of the normal-weight participants was 23 years.

Participants completed several assessments, including measures of eating attitudes (the Eating Attitude Test), beliefs about food (the Eating Beliefs Questionnaire), anxiety and depression symptoms (the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), alcohol use (the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test), sexuality-related disorder symptoms (the Sexological Questionnaire), quality of life (the SF-36 Quality of Life Questionnaire), and difficulties in emotion regulation (the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale).

The results showed that overweight and obese women tended to have worse scores across most measures. They exhibited less healthy eating habits, more severe symptoms of depression and anxiety, more severe symptoms of sexuality-related disorders, worse overall emotion regulation (though not on every subscale), and more maladaptive beliefs about food. Their quality of life was also worse compared to their normal-weight peers.

Women with more severe sexuality-related disorder symptoms were more likely to report a lower quality of life and higher levels of depression and anxiety. These factors were the strongest predictors of quality of life.

“Overweight or obese women show a higher occurrence of symptoms of sexuality-related disorders (especially sexual dysfunctions and sexual preference disorders) than women with a normal body weight. These symptoms are associated with difficulties in other areas of functioning and constitute a significant predictor of the quality of life,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the links between body mass status and sexual functioning. However, it should be noted that the study was conducted on a relatively small group of reproductive age women. Results on larger groups might not be identical. Additionally, the design of the study does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results.

The paper, “Symptoms of sexuality-related disorders in the group of overweight and obese women,” was authored by Anna Fuksiewicz, Barbara Kostecka, Emilia Kot, Aleksandra Jodko-Modlińska, and Katarzyna Kucharska.