Abstract
Background: healthy life style I mandatory for having nearest area to optimal health. Students at the medical field should be on the way of healthy behaviors which should be equal in both males and females.
Aim: ascertain gender differences in healthy habits if they exist.
Methodology: A random sample of 446 medical students (259 males and 187 females) was selected from faculty of medicine, King Khaled University, Abha, Saudi Arabia using a descriptive cross sectional approach. The sample was selected using one stage stratified cluster sampling technique with stratification based on student gender. A self-administered questionnaire containing the socio-demographic data of the respondent and their different lifestyle aspects (nutrition, smoking habits, physical activities and sleeping data) was used for data collection.
Results: The study included 446 medical students whose ages ranged from 17 to 29 years old with mean age of 21.9 +/- 1.9 years while 58.1% of the included students were males. About 97% of the male students believe in importance of having healthy life style compared to 98.4% of the females. Also 80.3% of the male students agreed in differences between males and females regarding concept towards healthy life style compared to 74.9% of the female students. Conclusions & recommendations: The current research proved that there is generally shortage in adopting healthy life style among medical students especially for smoking and nutritional behaviors and also there is significant differences between male and female students regarding many aspects of healthy behaviour.