Investigation of the effect of education on nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance of primary school students in Ilam - 2015

Background and objective: Nutritional habits are formed in childhood and will remain until the end of life. Proper nutrition in childhood leads to the promotion of growth and development of child and reduces the risk of chronic diseases during adulthood. This study aimed to assess the effect of education about nutrition on nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance of students in primary schools. Methods: This is a quasi-experimental study which is conducted in 2015. 180 students from primary school in Ilam city were selected randomly and assigned into case (90 people) and control (90 people) groups. Before initiation of educations, a pretest was held in both groups. Then for the case group, a nutritional education was performed during 5 sessions of 45 minutes. After 2 weeks of finishing the educational sessions, posttest was performed by giving a questionnaire of knowledge, attitude and performance to case and control groups. Eventually, two groups were compared with each other in terms of nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance. In order to analyze the collected data, SPSS 21 software was used. The significance level of tests was 5% and descriptive statistics including tables and numeric indices and also inferential tests including paired t-Test, independent t-Test and Chi-square were used. Results: Findings of this study showed that in the case group, there was a statistically significant difference between the mean score of knowledge, attitude and performance of students before and after education (P 0.05). There was also a significant difference between case and control groups after education (P< 0.05). Conclusion: Nutritional education may lead to the improvement of nutritional knowledge, attitude and performance of primary school students. Considering the importance and role of students and also low cost of preventive measures in comparison with therapeutic measures, it looks necessary to expand this type of educational program

Comparing the Effects of Vitamin B1 and Calcium on Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) among Female Students, Ilam- Iran

Background Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a combination of physical, psychological and emotional symptoms that occur periodically before menstruation and disappear with the onset of menstruation. There are some therapeutic methods mostly according to the clinical trials that reduce the prevalence and intensity of symptoms of PMS by unknown mechanisms. This study aimed to investigate the effects of Calcium and vitamin B1 on Premenstrual syndrome among female students. Materials and Methods: This is a triple-blind clinical trial conducted on 210 female students living in dormitories of Ilam University of Medical Sciences who had PMS. PMS symptoms questionnaire was used to investigate the symptoms. Participants were assigned in 3 groups of 70 people with the following regimen: group 1 received one pill containing 100 milligrams vitamin B1, group 2 received Calcium pills and group 3 received placebo. The participants in all groups took medicines for 2 months and then reported the intensity of their symptoms by the questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics, using SPSS-16. Results: In groups receiving vitamin B1, Calcium and placebo, the intensity of physical and psychological symptoms as well as general symptoms of PMS had a remarkable reduction (