An Epidemiologic Study on the Risk Factors of Obesity of Housewives and Their Husbands in Rural Community / 日本農村医学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

Mass health survey was conducted to discuss the relationship between obesity and some factors of agricultural managements and living and working conditions among 349 pairs of housewives and their husbands selected from the rural communities in Kumamoto prefecture.<BR>The prevalence rates of obesity (20% over of the Minowa's standard weights) were 13.1% for housewives of farmers, 13.7% for their husbands and 15.6 % for housewives of non-farmers, 9.2% for their husbands. The significant correlationship was found in the degree of obesity by Minowa's standard between housewives and their husbands (r= 0.1566, P<0.05).<BR>Being compared the prevalence of obesity according with the kinds of each household's producting crops, peoples of the household of “shiitake: cortinellus shiitake”, “vegetables by plastic greenhouse”, “tabacco” and “animal husbandary ” were more likely to be obese and, inversely, those of “barley”, “vegetables in upland” and “sericulture” were less, than those of “rice”, “mandarin orange” and “forestry”. In the household of “vegetables by plastic greenhouse”, “rice”, “barley”, “mandarin orange” and “vegetables in upland” husbands were more obese than housewives and, inversely, in the household of “shiitake” and “forestry” housewives were more obese than husbands.<BR>Peoples of fishing households were less likely to be obese than those of the farm households and/or other profession. Among the households of non-farmers it was noteworthy that higher prevalence rates of obesity were found in housewives than husbands, being inverse finding in the farmers case.<BR>The results suggested that the agricultural management and it's labor conditions, as well as the level of agricultural economics, might strongly affect the occurrence of obesity in the Japanese rural community.