Gemeinschaftsmedizin und Gesundheitserziehung

Abstrakt

Lifestyle Diseases and Associated Risk Behaviors among Medical Student in Saudi Arabia

Ali E Mansour, Salman Almokhlef, Rayan Alqfari and Mohammad Alduwayrij

Background: Lifestyle-related risk factors contribute to more than two thirds of Non-Communicable Diseases. They are responsible for the development of various metabolic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity. Medical students are exposed to various lifestyle related disease risk factor.
Objectives: To identify lifestyle diseases and associated risk behaviors among medical students, to find the association between the risk behaviors and gender of the student.
Materials and methods: A Cross sectional study was conducted on Unaizah College of Medicine. All medical students were given a chance to participate in the study (only 56% participated). Self-administered questioner was completed by all students. A written consent was obtained. The Data were collected and analyzed using SPSS.
Results: A total of 279 (56.0%) out of 507 medical students participated in the study of which 44.1% are male and 55.9% are female. 66.7% of medical students not doing exercise daily,74.2% of them watching TV and computer and 53.4% skipping breakfast. On the other hand, 24.7% of students are never eating fruits daily, 15.1% are smoker and 72.0% having stressors with no significance difference between male and female (p<0.05). Only 8.2% of students are eating fast food every day and 71% of them sleeping less than 8 hours per day with more significant among male than female (p<0.05).
Conclusion: Unhealthy lifestyle disease risk behavior is prevalent among medical students. There is will need to regular health education program to change in students’ health behavior and students should be motivated to adapt healthy lifestyle practices.