[Self-assessment of nutritinal status in medical students and objective measures of estimating somatic development]

Problem of "obesity epidemic" is still very common, but the knowledge about this is limited and it develops very slowly. Probably it even concerns medical students who are in touch with health problems every day and who will watch over society's health in the future. Available literature estimating people's health is mainly connected with negative measures of human health condition. Positive measures are rarely used, although they are simply in use and accessible (including financial accessibility). This kind of measures should be used in widest range to epidemiological investigation of obesity. The aim of the study was to estimate the level of medical student's obesity and to compare declared self-assessment expressed by BMI. In the research 416 III-VI year students of Medical University of Silesia were involved. We used a number of anonymous questionnaires to receive required information. We analyzed objective value of BMI, fat tissue capacity, student's self-assessment and student's satisfaction of their state of nutrition. Statistic analyzes were done using Epi Info v.5.01b program. Distribution of abnormal body weight among students under research was following: underweight--10.3% of the students, overweight--12% and II degree obesity--1.9% of investigated population. Among people with confirmed obesity only 100% of women realized this fact and 44.2% of men found their overweight as normal. Student's satisfaction of state of nutrition independently if it was proper or not, was significantly higher among men. It is necessary to teach students how to properly estimate the state of nutrition.