Correlation between students’ traditional medicine body constitution types and their quality of life

Objectives

Evaluating the physical health, mental health, and Quality of life (QoL) in relationship to body constitution (BC) types in students of the Faculty of Traditional Medicine (FTM) in the University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City (UMP).

Methods

A cross-sectional descriptive study on 717 students of FTM through face-to-face interviews used three questionnaires to investigate the following sections: general demographic information questionnaire; physical health (PCS), mental health (MCS), and QoL (Vietnamese version of SF-36 questionnaire); BC types (Vietnamese version of the CCMQ questionnaire). We used multiple linear regression analyses to assess the associations between BC types and each of the QoL domains’ scores. The dependent variables are the scores of eight QoL domains and integration scores in PCS and MCS.

Results

Most students had Unbalanced BC types (87.03 %). Qi-depression, Qi-deficiency, and Blood-stasis had the three highest percentages (48.1 %, 33.2 %, 26.9 %). There were relationships between BC types and students’ physical health, mental health, and QoL. The SF-36 resulted in “high” scores in most of the Neutral-type students, while the majority of students with Unbalanced BC types had “poor” scores in both physical health, mental health, and QoL (p < 0.01). The estimated impact of 8 Unbalanced types on SF-36 scales was significantly negative. The impact was most remarkable for Qi-stagnation, followed by Blood-stasis.

Conclusion

87.03 % of students had Unbalanced BC types, which in turn can increase the likelihood of disease. Research results also initially showed that adjusting these types to the Neutral type can help improve FTM students’ health.