Evaluation of quality of life and eating behavior in outpatients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and/or systemic arterial hypertension: a cross-sectional study

To evaluate the quality of life and eating behavior of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and/or systemic arterial hypertension treated at a specialized outpatient service in southern Brazil. The cross-sectional study included adults and elderly individuals previously diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus and/or systemic arterial hypertension. The WHOQOL-bref instrument was used to obtain quality of life. Eating behavior was assessed using the Three-factor Eating Questionnaire-R21. Multiple linear regression and Spearman's correlation were used to examine the relationship between quality of life and eating behavior. And the Mann-Whitney U-test, Kruskal-Wallis and multiple linear regression to verify the relationship between quality of life, behavior, sociodemographic and clinical. E o Spearman's correlation coefficient was used to examine the relationship between quality of life and eating behavior. A significance level of 5% was adopted for all analyses. A total of 326 participants were included, with a mean age of 57.0 ± 12.2 years, the majority of whom were females (70.9%) and adults (53.4%). Females exhibited worse quality of life, as observed in the domains of 'psychological' (p = 0.000), 'environmental' (p = 0.033), and general quality of life (p = 0.017). In addition, associations were also observed between quality of life and age, education level, and sleep duration. Sleeping less than 8 hours/day was the predictor that most contributed to the decrease in quality of life scores. Cognitive restriction was the dimension of eating behavior with the highest score (44.4); however, only uncontrolled eating (p = 0.000) and emotional eating (p = 0.000) were associated with age. Self-perception of quality of life changed according to gender, age group, sleep duration and eating behavior. The quality of life was inversely correlated with emotional eating and uncontrolled eating.