Abstract
To elucidate the correlation between lifestyle ( health practices ; sleeping hours, working hours, breakfast, eating between meals, salt, balance in diet, exercise, drinking, smoking) and great stress we made a survey for middle and advanced aged residents in a town for stress management and mental health promotion. The results obtained were as follows. 1) Univariate analysis The result obtained by using univariate analysis revealed that health practices. positively related to great stress ( i. e., in which odds ratio was greater than 1 ) were long working hours (≧ 9 hours ), hanvin no breakfast, eating between meals, no restriction on salt, poorly unbalanced diet and taking no regular exercise, whereas health practice , negatively related to great stress (i. e., in which odds ratio was smaller than 1 ) was too much drinking. In males the health practices, positively related to great stress ( i. e.. in which odds ratio was greater than 1 ) were long working hours, having no breakfast, eating between meals, and poorly balanced diet , whereas in females were long working hours, having no breakfast, eating between meals, no restriction on salt and taking no regular exercise. 2) Multivariate analysis The result obtained by using multivariate analysis to control the confounding factors revealed that health practices, positively related to great stress ( i. e., in which relative risk was greater than 1) were long working hours, eating between meals, poorly unbalanced diet and taking no regular exercise. In males the health practices, positively related to great stress (i. e., in which relative risk was greater than 1 ) were eating between meals and poorly unbalanced diet, whereas in females were long working hours and taking no regular exercise. These results reveal that healthy lifestyle prevents great stress and promotes mental health.
