Li-Li Chang¹, Yu-Chen Lin¹, Tsai Chang Lo¹, Ming-Chu Chen¹, Hsien-Wen Kuo^2,3*

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¹ Public Health Bureau of Miaoli County Government, Miaoli, Taiwan.
² Institute of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
³ School of Public Health, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan.
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Abstract: The objective of this study is to evaluate the healthy and unhealthy behaviors as risk factors for chronic constipation and self-rated health status. Eight hundred tenth students enrolled from a university in Miaoli city, Taiwan. Chronic constipation was assessed using Chinese questionnaire. Information of unhealthy and healthy lifestyles was interviewed by constructed questionnaire. Thirty-six percentage of university students were assessed as chronic constipation. Using multivariate logistic regression adjusted for age, sex, race and BMI, we found chronic constipation significantly correlated with frequency of consumption from snack, fast food, fried food, daily consumption of water, physical activity and junk food used as regular food. Moreover, these unhealthy behaviors significantly correlated with self-rated health status. Students with chronic constipation had poor self-rated health status. It is urgent to create healthy behaviors to reduce the risk for chronic constipation or upgrade self-rated health status in university students.

Keywords: Unhealthy Lifestyles, Chronic Constipation, Self-Rated Health Status, University Students

Cite this paper: Chang, L. , Lin, Y. , Lo, T. , Chen, M. , Kuo, H. (2015) Understanding the Lifestyle Correlates with Chronic Constipation and Self-Rated Health. Food and Nutrition Sciences, 6, 391-398. doi: 10.4236/fns.2015.64040.

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