#0033 Overweight, underweight, and obesity among male long-distance professional drivers in Iran
Are long-distance professional drivers more likely to be overweight?
With a high global prevalence, obesity is a serious disorder leading to various other comorbidities. Thus, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recently declared fighting overweight and obesity as one of its top priorities. Weight disorders are unfortunately commonplace in people with sedentary jobs.
For example, professional drivers who drive long distances are likely to develop unhealthy habits owing to the nature of their work, such as prolonged hours of sitting, lack of exercise, and irregular eating and sleeping schedules. Previously, researchers from various countries have shown that professional drivers are prone to being overweight and obese, but there is little evidence of this in developing countries.
Therefore, in our cross-sectional study, we estimated the prevalence of weight disorders, namely being overweight, underweight, or obese, among Iranian long-distance professional drivers. We interviewed 36,625 male Iranian drivers, who then underwent clinical and laboratory examinations.
We found that 39.1% of all participants were overweight, 10.8% were obese, and 2.7% were underweight. At first glance, these numbers are not very different from the global values reported by the WHO. However, our statistical analyses revealed that older drivers were considerably more likely to be overweight (43.2%) or obese (12.2%) than drivers who were younger or had fewer years of experience. Our findings also showed that underweight drivers were generally younger and were more likely to be smokers.
In addition, our laboratory examinations showed that obese and overweight drivers had higher blood levels of fasting glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol, as well as higher blood pressure. Overall, our study presents concrete evidence that weight disorders are very common in Iranian professional drivers. Most importantly, considering that being obese or overweight is a main risk factor for many chronic diseases, our results emphasize the need for more programs to promote positive health and lifestyle interventions.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/1348-9585.12114
Title of the paper:
Overweight, underweight, and obesity among male long-distance professional drivers in Iran
Authors:
Siamak Pourabdian, Parastoo Golshiri, Mohsen Janghorbani
