Burden of combined obesity among students of a medical college in Guntur city of Andhra Pradesh

Burden of combined obesity among students of a medical college in Guntur city of Andhra Pradesh Sree M. S.1, Dampetla S.2* DOI: https://doi.org/10.17511/ijphr.2019.i3.02 1 Santhi Sree M., Department of Community Medicine, Ananta Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Rajsamand, Rajasthan, India. 2* Srujana Dampetla, Department of Physiology, Guntur Medical College, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India.


Introduction
Background: Obesity is a major public health problem especially in adolescent age group. Obesity is now recognized as chronic non-communicable disease [1]. Medical students are also not an exception to come under this over weight and obesity category in spite of their medical knowledge. Stress is the major factor which contributes to obesity [2].
Medical education is highly stressful so majority of the students are having irregular unhealthy lifestyle.
Due to the pressure of examinations and lack of coping skills medical students have irregular dietary habits. Medical students need to be extra conscious about overweight and obesity because its prevalence was found as high among them.
This obesity and overweight is a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases and co morbidities [3][4]. In Asian Indians evidence show that body fat is more than muscle mass. According to WHO cut off for BMI in non obese are actually obese when body fat taken into consideration [5]. In some cases central obesity is very high in individuals whom the BMI is normal which has been termed "metabolically obese" [6].
Studies shows that in The Asian Indians body fat composition is high compared to muscle mass which is the main cause for metabolic obesity. Some Indians considered non-obese by the WHO criteria of BMI cut-offs are actually obese when body fat is used to define obesity. Secondly there is a high prevalence of abdominal adiposity even in people who are otherwise considered as non-obese [7-8-9].
Central obesity is important risk factor for cardiac risk than compared to general obesity. Waist circumference is simple and easily obtainable measurement for central obesity [10][11].
In many studies BMI has taken as important parameter for obesity, but in few studies waist circumference has taken into consideration. In our study we have taken both BMI and WC combined obesity which is a potential risk factor for many diseases especially non-communicable diseases.
So this study was done with the aim to estimate the prevalence of central obesity combined with high Body Mass Index among the undergraduate medical students.
Objectives of the study: The primary objective Was to assess the burden of central obesity combined with high Body Mass Index among medical students.

Methodology
Study setting: The current study was conducted in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Andhra Pradesh  Quantitative variables were summarized as mean and standard deviation; categorical variables were summarized as frequencies and percentages.
Association between quantitative variables was assessed by Pearson correlation coefficient. P Value < 0.05 will be considered as statistically significant.    There is significant (P<0.001) negative correlation between Waist Circumference and exercise.

Ethical consideration and permission:
There is significant negative correlation between reading and mobile usage. TV viewing & listening music also has significant negative correlation with reading (Table 3).  (Figure 1).

Discussion
In  In that study also BMI taken for overweight and obesity assessment and found the prevalence of overweight was 13(9.93%) and the prevalence of obesity was 2 (1.53%). The prevalence of underweight was 25 (19.08%) [18].
In this study we mainly concentrated on combined obesity which includes both BMI and waist circumference, which predicts more metabolic Obesity is not only aetiology of many diseases it also affects the quality of life and finally leads to premature death [20]. Both BMI and WC in combination would be better predictors of obesity related diseases than sole using of BMI or WC alone [21].