Assessment of Life Style: Physical activity, Nutrition Status, Sleep Duration, and BMI Among Schools? Adolescents in Oman (14-18)

In the past, life depended on rigorous physical activity both in occupation and recreation. Nevertheless, jobs and pleasure seeking life had drastically reduced exposure to physical activity and increased exposure to the availability of high-fats and dense-caloric foods, as a new trend influencing the life style. In addition, observation of physical education classes at the secondary stage in Oman assures the weakness of physical integration curriculum to healthy lifestyle. Such life style synergizes for developing hypokinetic related diseases (HRD) noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)incidence. In this millennium active life style and physical activity are necessary for children especially teenagers and adolescents. Therefore, it is imperative to establish a base line data for male/female Omani national population between 14-18 yrs of old regarding healthy life style to combat HRD NCDs.A school-based cross-sectional multicenterconsultancy_services will be adopted. The participants are adolescent males and females enrolled across secondary schools in Sultanate of Oman.The main purposes of this research proposal are to describe current patterns related to: (1)daily physical activity and regular exercise activity among Omani adolescents;(2) dietary patterns in respect of daily macro and micro nutrias intake and frequency of food consumption of Omani adolescents; (3) Body mass index (BMI), total body fat (TBF), Overweight and Obesity prevalence among Omani adolescents. It is also endeavor to investigate the associations between obesity measures and several lifestyle factors, including physical activity, sedentary behaviors sleep duration and dietary habits among Omani adolescents. Evaluation and examination of the data will be conducted also when comparing gender differences on the above variables. It is expected that the findings stemming from this strategic research endeavor will be substantial and very beneficial from public health perspectives. The results of this research will certainly supply us for the first time with a comprehensive and recent data on physical activity/inactivity patterns, eating habits, and sleep curtailment of Omani Adolescents, and their relationships to risk factors measures. Finally, this project will provide valuable baseline data for Ministry of education, Curriculum supervisors in PE, public health authorities and policy makers in the Sultanate of Oman, which are very essential for any strategy aimed at improving physical health education in schools and at preventing and controlling Hypokinetic and NCDs.