Abstract

Background: Adequate rest, proper diet, and active lifestyle with good academics are essential components that a medical student must incorporate in their lives to become a successful and qualified health-care professional. Advancement of internet and information technology, changed dietary patterns, unhealthy lifestyles, and inadequate sleep has severe impact on academic performance of medical students. Aims and Objectives: The present study was carried out (i) to study the impact of sleep pattern, internet use, diet, and lifestyle on medical students’ academic performance and (ii) to compare the effect of the ethnic and cultural background of medical students on the above parameters.
Materials and Methods: We included 50 Malaysian medical students and 128 Indian students of a private University Medical College in Karnataka state, India. A pretested and validated questionnaire on internet usage, dietary habits, lifestyle activity, and sleep pattern was administered to them, and their responses were analyzed statistically.
Results: Majority of them are deprived of healthy sleep with an average duration of 6-8 h/day. Half of them consume junk food daily with less preference to fruits and vegetables. Indian and Malaysian students use the internet daily though for different purposes but hardly for any educational need. Occasionally, Indian students engage in sports and yoga compared with Malaysian students. 20% of Indian students failed to clear their previous academic examination, whereas Malaysian students cleared the exam successfully.
Conclusions: This study shows that decreased sleep pattern, heavy internet usage, unhealthy dietary practices, and sedentary lifestyle have a negative impact on academic performance.