Some Properties of Over 40 Years Women with High School and Over Regarding Menopausal Period and Conception of Calcium Source Foods in Diyarbakır

The aim of this study was to determine the properties of women in pre or post menopausal period and their conception of calcium source foods. We interviewed randomly selected, aged over 40 years, 390 women with high school or higher education level in Diyarbakir. Body mass indexes (BMI) of the women were also calculated by measuring height and weight. 28,72% of the study population were postmenopausal. Of the postmenopausal women, 18,75 % had experienced a surgical or medical intervention causing menopause. Average menopausal age was 45,63±4,60 for natural menopause. According to BMI 37,44% of the women was with over weight and 8,21% of them was with obesity. Prevalence of overweight was higher in post menopausal women than others (16,10% - 5,00%) (p: 000). Only 24,62 % of the women attended to a physician for medical counseling. 14,61% of them were using calcium supplementary drugs and 6,41% of them were using estrogen regularly. Although most of the women (82,31%) had information bout increasing calcium requirement during postmenopausal period but 35,13% of them were consuming calcium source foods sufficiently. This result showed that knowledge on good nutrition was not reflected to their nutritional habits, and health education programmes should be conducted on this manner