Relationship between dietary supplement usage with anxiety in adults

Introduction and Aim: Frequency of using vitamins, minerals, probiotics and other products that is classified as dietary supplements, is increasing day by day with the contribution of successful sales strategies and advertisements and due to its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and immune-booster effects. The Covid-19 epidemic process, which has been fought for three years, is thought to increase health anxiety, and that the fear and stress caused changes in the nutritional habits of individuals, and so the use of dietary supplements could also be affected. With this study, we aimed to observe the usage of dietary supplements, the causes of using them, if happened their side effects and, the relationship of this use with the demographic characteristics, anxiety, fear of Covid-19 and pandemic. Materials and Methods: Cross-sectional single session online survey was conducted with the patients and relatives aged between 18-75 who admitted to Maltepe University Family Medicine outpatient clinic willing to fill the online survey between 01.10.2022-01.11.2022. Online forms are used as data collection tool. Data analysis is made with "MINITAB 22", Google Sheets, openepi programmes and the statical significance accepted as p<0.05. Results: Average age for the study group was 35.2 ± 11.3 years and 67.4% of them were women. 372 (67.4%) participants were using dietary supplements and the most used ones among them were vitamin D (16.1%), vitamin C (15.8%), vitamin B12 (10.4%) and multivitamins (9.9%). Purpose of using dietary supplements in participants were boosting immunity (24.9%), weakness (12.3%), as a doctor advise after laboratory test results, and Covid-19 (%9.1). Frequency of using dietary supplements in women (72.6%) was higher than men (56.7%) (p<0.001). Conclusion: Usage of dietary supplements were statistically significantly higher in women, university graduates, participants with chronic disease, Covid-19 infection history, chronic medication users, history of antidepressants, participants with higher score in Beck anxiety test and participants who have been vaccinated for Covid-19. Pandemia and being infected by Covid-19 were not correlated with the anxiety and Covid-19 fear scale. Increased age group participants had lower frequency of anxiety and, higher Covid fear index. Anxiety frequency decreased and the Covid fear scale score increased as the age group got older. While the usage of dietary supplements increased significantly in the presence of anxiety in non-healthcare workers, this relationship was not statistically significant in healthcare workers. Key Words: anxiety, Covid-19 fear, dietary supplementation