The bidirectional relationship between severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and lifestyle factors in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder: a contemporaneous and prospective analysis

Previous studies on other psychiatric disorders have found that unhealthy lifestyle factors are associated with more severe psychiatric symptoms. It appears that OCD might differ in these aspects. In the present study, drug and alcohol use, higher BMI, and a composite score of unhealthy lifestyle factors were not associated with more severe OCD symptoms and did not predict greater symptom severity two years later. However, consistent with findings in other psychiatric disorders, higher levels of physical activity were significantly associated with lower OCD symptom severity two years later. Further research is needed to determine whether increasing physical activity could result in less severe OCD symptoms.