ABSTRACT
Background: Obesity is on the rise among Indian women; increasing from 12.6% (NFHS-3) to 20.7% (NFHS-4). This leads to dysregulation of several groups of hormones and has deleterious effect on the reproductive system. Extra adipocytes are sources of extra estrogen that can cause menstrual disorders such as oligomenorrhoea, polymenorrhoea, menorrhagia and metrorrhagia. Counselling women about weight reduction will help in improving their reproductive health and quality of life. Thus, the present study was done to assess obesity among women and to describe the menstrual abnormalities among them; simultaneously, the perception of obesity among these women was also assessed.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted by doing house to house survey among 250 women of reproductive age residing in the urban field practice area of KIMS, Bangalore for a period of 3 months from June to August 2018. Details about socio-demographic factors, presence of any menstrual abnormalities and perception of obesity were collected using questionnaire by house to house survey. Anthropometric measurements were done and BMI was calculated. Data was entered in MS excel and analysed using appropriate statistical tests.Results: The study included 250 subjects; among whom 59.2% were obese. The common menstrual problems reported were dysmenorrhea (52.8%), oligomenorrhea (20.4%), hypomenorrhea (14.1%), menorrhagia (13.6%) and polymenorrhea (1.6%). Menstrual problems affected daily activities in 50.7% subjects. The difference between perception of their body image and their actual weight was found to be statistically significant.Conclusions: Obesity is an important health issue among women and most of them had menstrual abnormalities.