Abstract
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 factors.
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 at Unaizah College of Medicine. All medical students were included in our study. A self-administered questionnaire was completed by all students. 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% were male and 55.9% female. 66.7 % of medical students were not doing daily exercise; 74.2% of them were watching TV and computer and 53.4 % were skipping breakfast. On the other hand, 24.7 % of students never eat fruits daily, 15.1% are smokers and 72.0% have stressors with no significant difference between males and females (P < 0.05). Only 8.2% of students eat fast food every day and 71% of them are sleeping less than 8 hours per day with more significance among males than females (P<0.05).
Conclusion: Unhealthy lifestyle disease risk behavior is prevalent among medical students. There is a need to undertake a regular health education program to change students' health behavior and students should be motivated to adopt healthy lifestyle practices.