Life style risk factors for obesity and hypertension among medical students of Meerut district

Background: In recent years obesity has become very common health concern worldwide. Much debate has been generated regarding the increasing incidence of obesity among children and adolescents with respect to their long term health benefits. The life of professional students is stressful throughout the whole course of training. Types of food intake, lack of exercise, psychological depression due to study burden, pressure of examination, discrepancies between expectation and reality all can be anticipated in bring psychological stress. The purpose of the study was to assess life style related risk factors for obesity and hypertension among medical students. Methods: Current study was a cross-sectional study, conducted among 200 randomly selected medical students of 3rd and 4th year out of 300 students. The Study Period was from Jan 2014 to March 2014. A Pre-designed and Pre-tested questionnaire related to life style factors was introduced among the medical students. The Data thus collected was entered in Microsoft Excel and analyzed further using SPSS-version 21. Results: In this study, consumption of non-vegetarian diet , fast food , smoking & tobacco chewing and consumption of alcohol were seen and these risk factors are significantly associated with overweight/ obese and hypertension among students. Conclusion: Medical students were not much conscious to make extra efforts to choose a healthier lifestyle. Healthy lifestyles among medical students are even more important as they are future doctors and the students who personally ignore healthy lifestyle are more likely to fail to establish health promotion opportunities for their patients.