Emotional Support, Depressive Symptoms, and Age-Related Alterations in Male Body Composition: Cross-Sectional Findings from the Men's Health 40+ Study.

Andreas Walther,Niclà Lozza,Michel Philipp,Ulrike Ehlert

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01075

Abstract

More depressive symptoms and low emotional support have been related to worse body composition. Body composition significantly deteriorates in aging men. Therefore, we aimed to examine whether high emotional support and low depressive symptoms are associated with better body composition and a decelerated age-related deterioration of body composition in aging men. A cross-sectional analysis including 269 self-reporting healthy men aged between 40 and 75 years living in the German-speaking part of Switzerland was conducted. Participants completed questionnaires on emotional support and depressive symptoms. The depression screening instrument was used to form a group with low (N = 225) and moderate (N = 44) depressive symptoms. Body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) were measured, and cell proportion (CP), fat mass (FM), and water balance (WB) were obtained using bioelectrical impedance analysis. Age-related associations emerged for WHR, CP, FM, and WB, but not for BMI. Emotional support was negatively associated with BMI, WHR, and WB, and only trend-wise with CP and FM. Group comparisons revealed that more depressive symptoms were associated with lower levels of CP and higher levels of WB. Both emotional support and depressive symptoms were significant moderators of the association between age and specific measures of body composition such as CP, FM, and WB. However, after correction for multiple testing for moderation analyses only the moderation effects of depressive symptoms on the association between age and WB and CP remained significant. Low depressive symptoms were associated with a better body composition as well as a decelerated decline in body composition and the role of emotional support acting as a buffer against age-related deterioration of body composition merits further investigation.

Highlights

Emotional support is considered to be a powerful protective agent against depression and against obesity (Vogelzangs et al, 2007; Sharpley et al, 2015)
All statistical significant associations between age and measures of body composition remained significant after applying the Holm–Bonferroni method to control for multiple testing
The Berlin Social Support Scales (BSSS) comprises of two subscales emotional support (BSSS-ES) and instrumental support (BSSS-IS)

Summary

Introduction

Emotional support is considered to be a powerful protective agent against depression and against obesity (Vogelzangs et al, 2007; Sharpley et al, 2015). A third study used a single item to assess fathers’ emotional support “Is there someone you can turn to for day-to-day emotional help with parenthood/raising children?” with the response options “yes” and “no” and subsequently measured overweight or obesity status of the children (Watt et al, 2012). In Englishspeaking Hispanic fathers the odds to have an overweight/obese child were significantly higher than in Whites, but reporting to have emotional support reduced the odds by 80%. These studies failed to measure emotional support with validated scales of emotional support and are not unambiguously interpretable with regard to the construct of emotional support. There is a need for studies investigating the relationship between body composition and emotional and other forms of social support with validated scales allowing to disentangle specific effects of emotional or instrumental support

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