Research on fatigue characteristics of flying personnel and involved constitutions classified by traditional Chinese medicine

Abstract

Objective To explore the fatigue characteristics of military flying personnel and conclude their reflection of the constitutions that classified according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory.Methods Questionnaire survey was conducted on 924 military flying personnel by using fatigue assessment instrument (FAI) and TCM Constitution Scale.The constitutions of the flying personnel were classified based on TCM theory and were analyzed then.Nonparametric test,x2 test and Pearson correlation analysis were performed by SPSS 17.0 software.Results ① The results showed that 343 flying personnel (37.1％) had positive fatigue symptoms and 581 subjects (62.9％) had negative fatigue symptoms.②Among 343 fatigue-positive flying personnel,111 cases (32.4 ％) were judged as normal constitution according to TCM theory,and 232 cases (67.6 ％) were judged as biased constitution.Biased constitution had greater chance of fatigue-positive than normal constitution(x2=120.805,P =0.000).③The frequency of breaking fatigue-positive was different among constitutions.Biased constitution was more frequent than normal constitution.The top 5 constitutions of having frequent fatigue-positive were Qi deficiency,damp-phlegm,normal,Yang deficiency and damp-heat.④Correlations between the factors of FAI and TCM defined constitutions were concluded as:factor 1 (severity of fatigue),factor 2 (environmental specificity of fatigue),factor 3 (psychological consequences of fatigue) and total scores had positive correlation with 8 biased constitutions but had negative correlation with normal constitution.Conclusion There is an inherent correlation between fatigue characteristics and TCM defined constitutions in Chinese military flying personnel. Key words: Fatigue;  Etiol factor & pathog TCM;  Physical constitution theory;  Questionnaires