Some social factors' influence on women's lifestyle

Unhealthy lifestyle including smoking, unlimited use of alcohol, improper nutrition or insufficient physical activity has a negative impact on people‘s health and increases the risk of chronic illnesses. The surveys have proved that 82 percent of coronary heart diseases and 91percent of diabetes (II) cases were provoked by risk factors that depend on lifestyle; therefore, the observation of lifestyle is important while planning and evaluating the programs of health improvement and prophylaxis of chronic diseases. In Lithuania there still is a big disjuncture between societies of city and district, different education and economic status. That is why it is important to find out at what extent this disjuncture influences women‘s lifestyle. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the influence on women‘s lifestyle made by some social factors. To reach this aim these tasks were raised: 1. To define peculiarities of women‘s, living in city and district, lifestyle. 2. To estimate the body mass index (BMI) of the researched women depending on their age, education, income and place of living. 3. To define differences of knowledge about healthy eating of the researched women. A casual group of 526 accidentally chosen women aged 20-64 years old and living in city or district was organized. The survey was implemented using a questionnaire that contained questions about nutrition, physical activity, addictions, opinion about certain aspects of nutrition and knowledge related to healthy lifestyle. Women, who live in city, choose food regarding its taste (37,9 percent) while women living in district pay more attention to the price (40,2 percent). Women living in city consume more fresh vegetables when district women use more vegetables that were grown on their own (91 percent). What is more, district women use animal fat for cooking more frequently than city women. In both city and district women eat irregularly. The majority of city women (48,5 percent) work sedentary job. Both city and district women usually spend their free-time passively. There were more women who smoke in city (22,7 percent) then in district (12,8 percent). Wine was more frequently used by city women having university education. The normal body mass index was demonstrated mostly by young women (aged 20-35 years old) (63 percent), city women (55 percent) and women having university education (54 percent). Most of the women do not follow any principles of healthy eating because of lack of habits. Only 24 percent of women having university education and 24 percent of women with secondary school education indicated the principles of healthy eating correctly. Knowledge about the influence of the use of different fats to heart and blood vessels diseases and healthy eating was similar between women with different education and different place of living. At most times women aged 35-49 years old get their knowledge about healthy lifestyle from the media