14355

The Influence of Stress on Body Mass Index among Female University Students

Article

Last updated: 03 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

-

Abstract

Background: The interrelatedness between obesity and psychological problems seems to be twofold, in that clinically meaningful psychological distress might foster weight gain and obesity may lead to psychosocial problems. Stress may contribute to changes in dietary behaviors that lead to weight change, with various effects related to sex baseline body mass index, or cortisol reactivity in response to stress. Objective: To describe the relationship between stress, weight-related health behaviors (e.g., eating behaviors, physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep, cigarette smoking and binge drinking), and weight status using cross-sectional data from community college students. Methods: This was a community-based cross-sectional study. Data were collected from representative sample of undergraduate female students in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A total of 208 undergraduate female students were included in this study. The study period was from October 2017 to December 2017. Data were collected by means of personal interview with the participants using a predesigned questionnaire which was distributed among students and  filled by personal interviewing after a brief introduction or explanation of the idea of the research to the participants . Results: There was a high significant correlation between stress and BW (P= 0.004). We found no relation between BW and academic year, fast food consumption, main meal content, muscular exercise and cause of stress. There was a high significant correlation between BW and number of meals per day (P= 0.000), stress level (P=0.000) and dealing with stress (P=0.017). Conclusion and Recommendations: Factors which were significantly associated with BMI and stress should be further studied to include  number of meals per day, stress level and dealing with stress). Interventions among university students should relate actual measured BMI to stress perception of the students in order to target students at risk. Universities should offer individual counselling for at risk students in order to prevent eating disorders, and should offer psychological and stress related counselling, but should also counteract unrealistic body image concerns of students by broad health communication campaigns. 

DOI

10.21608/ejhm.2018.14355

Keywords

university students, BMI, Stress, Influence, Dietary behaviors, Muscular exercise

Authors

First Name

Nada Fahad M

Last Name

Alsultan

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, King Faisal University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Malik Dham

Last Name

Alanazi

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, King Faisal University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Daham Obaid

Last Name

Alshammari

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, King Faisal University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Zahrah Ali

Last Name

Alsayafi

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, King Faisal University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Yahya Mohammed

Last Name

Alzahrani

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, King Faisal University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Ayat Abdulnasser

Last Name

Boholigah

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, Arabian Gulf University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Kawthar Ali

Last Name

Alnahwi

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, Arabian Gulf University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Lama Zaki

Last Name

Nasserullah

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, Arabian Gulf University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Lina Zaki

Last Name

Nasserullah

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Student, Arabian Gulf University

Email

-

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

73

Article Issue

3

Related Issue

2442

Issue Date

2018-10-01

Receive Date

2018-09-21

Publish Date

2018-10-01

Page Start

6,359

Page End

6,366

Print ISSN

1687-2002

Online ISSN

2090-7125

Link

https://ejhm.journals.ekb.eg/article_14355.html

Detail API

https://ejhm.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=14355

Order

27

Type

Original Article

Type Code

606

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

The Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine

Publication Link

https://ejhm.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

The Influence of Stress on Body Mass Index among Female University Students

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023