Prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome, influence of lifestyle factors and bowel habits in Korean college students.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is considered to be prevalent in the general population, but there are little data on bowel habits and IBS in Korea. Because nurses are frequently called on to help this patient population with IBS and help manage their symptoms, it is very necessary to get some practical information about patients' experiences and to outline a multifaceted approach to the practical management of patient with IBS. So this study aims to describe the bowel habits and the prevalence of IBS in young university students in Korea and to investigate the influence of lifestyle factors, including dietary habits, on IBS prevalence. Finally, we discuss the nursing needs for an holistic approach. METHODS: A cross-sectional study, using the self-reported questionnaire based on previous studies done abroad and the Rome alpha criteria was applied with 1717 young university students. RESULTS: The answers of 747 men and 970 women were included in the study. The prevalence of IBS, as defined by the Rome alpha criteria, was 5.7% of the subjects. The proportion of women (70.7%) was significantly higher than the proportion of men in the IBS group as compared to that in the non-IBS group (odds ratio 2.07, 95% CI 1.2-3.7). Residential type (odds ratio 1.27, 95% 1.06-1.5) and frequency of meals (odds ratio 1.69, 95% CI 1.2-2.5) significantly differed between the IBS group and non-IBS group. There was a trend towards the higher prevalence of IBS with fewer hours of exercise (odds ratio 0.99, 95% CI 0.95-1.04). 90.6% of respondents reported stool frequencies between three times per day and three times per week. Characteristics of defecation differed significantly between men and women (p<0.05, to p<0.0001). CONCLUSION: The prevalence of IBS in healthy young people of Korea was lower compared with those reported in the West. This study shows that proportionately more women suffered from IBS than men and dietary factors and lifestyle were significantly related to IBS. From our study results, we found that there are multifaceted nursing aspects required to reduce symptoms, such as dietary education and encouragement to change lifestyle aimed at controlling stress.

Sleep duration, subjective sleep disturbances and associated factors among university students in Korea.

Objective of this study was to look into sleep patterns of university students in association with their lifestyle, specifically to examine mean sleep duration, prevalence of sleep disturbances and their correlates. This study also aimed to examine a possible association of sleep patterns of young adults with new media like computers and videos, which were supposed to have a great influence on their lifestyle. Self-reported sleep data were derived from questionnaires administered to a total of 1,414 students of one university located in Chullabuk-do, Korea. Statistical methods such as t-test, analyses of variance, chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression were used for analysis. The mean sleep duration of the respondents was 6.7+/-1.3 hr. Of the respondents, 30.2% reported having insufficient sleep. About one third of them pointed to visual media including computers as the primary reason. The proportion of those having some types of sleep disturbances was 36.2%. The risk of subjective sleep disturbances was significantly lower among those perceiving themselves healthy than among those perceiving themselves unhealthy (OR=0.44; 95% CI: 0.34-0.57).