A Report of Association among Faith, Lifestyle, and Health in the Korean Seventh-Day Adventists

Abstract

The objective of this present cross-sectional study was to examine the relationship between faith, healthy lifestyle practices, and health statuses among the Korean Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) study population in Seoul, Korea. The outcomes of the study included the frequency tables to show general information of the Korean SDA study participants including frequency of lifestyle practices and health statuses. Also, a Chi-square test was used to evaluate the association of faith/spirituality with lifestyle practices and health statuses; lifestyle practices with the years of belonging to SDA church; and lifestyle practices with the overall church meeting. Furthermore, a Spearman''s correlation test was performed to examine the association of acceptance of SDA health message and lifestyle practice among the Korean SDA church members. The study results indicated that the Korean SDA participants with higher religious/spiritual belief or faith tend to show statistically significant association with abstinence from substance abuse such as alcohol and tobacco and less chances of having hypertension and diabetes. There was also significant relationship between substance abuse and spirituality by negative correlation while Sabbath rest, diet, sleep pattern, water intake, sun exposure and exercise showed significant association with spirituality by a positive correlation. While the Korean SDA study participants showed lower rate of chronic disease and higher rate of healthy lifestyle practice, it was found that the higher level of faith exhibited less disease promoting-risky lifestyle factors, more health promotingprotective lifestyle factors, and better health statuses. Such outcomes were also shown in the Korean-American SDAs study participants residing in Texas studied by the same authors; and both Korean Adventists’ practice of healthy lifestyle and achievement of health status were better than a general population living in both USA and Korea.