Healthy habits, capillary glucose and blood pressure in university students

Abstract

Introduction. University students’ lifestyles are affected by academic demands, schedules, and workload, which encourage unhealthy habits such as sedentary behavior and poor diet. Objective. To correlate healthy lifestyle with capillary glucose levels and blood pressure in young adult university students. Materials and methods. An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted with 201 students from the Faculty of Health Sciences at a private university in the State of Guerrero, Mexico, between November 2025 and January 2026. Sampling was non-probability and convenience-based. The Healthy Lifestyle questionnaire, validated by Santiago-Bazán in 2019, was administered. Statistical analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and Spearman’s correlation. Results. 80.6% of students reported spending time only on academic activities, with no recreation. 57.2% had a moderate level of healthy lifestyle, and 42.8% had a high level. 62.7% and 66.7% of participants had normal systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings, respectively, and 11.4% had abnormal capillary glucose levels. No correlation was observed between lifestyle score and blood pressure or capillary glucose levels. Conclusion. The overall lifestyle score was not significantly correlated with blood pressure or capillary glucose. Nearly half of the participants had at least one blood pressure reading outside the normal range, and one in ten had abnormal capillary glucose; these findings support periodic screening and clinical confirmation of abnormal results.