Overweight, obesity and influence of stress on body weight among undergraduate medical students

Obesity is emerging as a serious problem throughout the world, not only among adults, but also children, teenagers and young adults. Of the factors contributing to obesity, stress seems to be particularly important as stressful condition leads to irregularity in diet, lack of exercise and addiction, each being considered independent factors leading to obesity.(1) Medical education is stressful throughout the whole course of training. The amount of material to be absorbed, social isolation, pressure of examination, discrepancies between expectation and reality all can be anticipated to bring psychological stress.(2) Hence, this study was undertaken to find out the prevalence of overweight and obesity among undergraduate medical students. An attempt was made to find out the significance of presence or absence of factors influencing body weight.