Journal de l'obésité et de la thérapeutique

Does Obesity Cause Flat Foot?

Shyamala Shree, Revathi S, Arulmani Thiyagarajan and Dhasarathi Kumar

Objective: Obesity is becoming hype in the field of Nutrition and health. The Study aimed to determine the effects of obesity on foot structure and function, and the foot pain experienced by college students. Methods: Students from the department of health sciences and nursing were included in the study. The sampling was nonprobabilistic and based on the willingness of the students to respond. Height and weight were measured on the student with light clothes and without shoes using standard apparatus. The Body Mass Index was used as an Indicator of obesity. Each subject was classified by their BMI score and scored accordingly. Results: In this study, the overall prevalence of flat foot among obese subjects is 44%. The mean age of the participant was 20 years with S.D ± 3 and comparatively female students are high in number (62%). The variable weight and BMI are found to have significant statistical association (weight, p-value=0.00 and BMI, p-value=0.026). Conclusion: This study aimed to check whether the obesity can cause flat foot or not. As per our results, there has been a strong correlation between overweight or obese and flat foot presence, which indicates that there exists association. And gender, age have no association with the Flat foot, supporting the previous literature.