The change in lifestyle data during 9 years: The reliability and continuity of baseline health practices

Abstract

Objectives: To reveal change patterns in self-reported lifestyle data for 9 years, and examine the characteristics of changes by type of lifestyle and ageing. Methods: The authors used the lifestyle data of 7,080 male workers aged 20-59 who received checkups for 9 years. The proportions of change patterns during the 9 years were determined in seven health practices; smoking, eating breakfast, sleeping hours, working hours, physical exercise, eating nutritional balanced diets, and mental stress. Results: Among seven health practices, the keep rate of good health practice was highest for the non-smoking (90.8 %), followed by eating breakfast (69.0 %);and the lowest was physical exercise (13.7 %). The keep rate of poor health practice was highest for smoking (73.8 %), followed by non-physical exercise (67.1 %). The lowest rate of multiple changes during 10 years was smoking (7.1 %); the highest was mental stress (68.5 %). Conclusions: As for the life style on smoking and eating breakfast seemed to be stable, using the data obtained at a specific point in time wouldn't much affect the results. On the contrary, for other life styles, they showed poor continuity during 9 years, so it would be necessary to take into consideration the time point of data collection. © 2013 The Japanese Society for Hygiene.