Relationship of waist to hip ratio and academic performance of first year medical college students

Abstract

During education main concern of the students and their parents is academic performance. Overweight/obesity in children and adolescent is growing problem in developed as well as in developing countries. The present study was carried out to find the relationship of waist to hip ratio (WHR) with the academic performance in first year medical college students during their academic year. The study included 100 healthy students, 60 males and 40 females. Considering cut-off value of WHR for Asian Indian adults they were divided in to two study groups, Group I with higher WHR (Males > 0.88 and Females > 0.81) and Group II with lesser WHR (Males < 0.88 and Females < 0.81). Rounded up internal assessment marks were compared between Males (30 with higher and 30 with lesser WHR), Females (20 with higher and 20 with lesser WHR) and total students (50 with higher and 50 with lesser WHR). Student‘s unpaired t test was applied for statistical analysis. The outcomes were presented as a mean (SD) and ‘p’ value of less than 0.05 was considered as significant. Our study concluded that academic performance of Group I students was significantly less than Group II when total and only male students were compared. But difference was not significant in females. Psychosocial behaviour and less mental processing due to poor physical activity in group I students may be the cause of significant findings. More research work is needed to obtain precise relationship between WHR and academic performance