Investigation of the obesity among the students participating in a survey at a university

The aim of this study is to determine the prevalance of obesity and its causal factors among the university students attending in the İstanbul Aydın University. A survey-poll with 63 questions including the topics about nutrional habits, daily diets and physical activites was conducted. The students were required to bring some metabolic blood parameters, and their body mass index (BMI) were measured. Totally 169 students (136 female and 33 male) were involved in this study. Depending on BMI data 21.3% of the students were categorized as obese, 31.3% as pre-obese, 45.6% as normal, and 1.8% as well as lean. Based on these facts the existence of any correlation between blood parameters and BMI was statistically examined. According to statistical analysis a positive correlation was obtained between BMI and Aspartate Aminotransferase (p<0.01), Alanine Aminotransferase (p<0.01), Triglyceride (p<0.01), Serum Iron (p<0.05), Free Triiodothyronine (p<0.05), Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (p<0.05) whereas there was a negative correlation between BMI and HDL Cholesterol (p<0.01). It was found that obesity has a close relationship with nutritional habits, lifestyle, and lack of movement even though based on these facts coversely the majority of the students are not interested in any physical activity, but have over-feeding habits, especially fast-foods with defensive argument of stressful exam periods. In conclusion, universities must urgently develop new policies of physical activity for all the students in order to lower the significantly higher rate of obesity (21.3%) to the health level among the university students.