Asian Journal of Research in Medicine and Medical Science

The cases of hypertension seen in the hospital are “just a tip of the iceberg”, as its unknown morbidity rate greater than known morbidity, with complications quite overwhelming.The importance of lifestyle modification practices, as a prevention to this menace can not be over emphasized.With the rising prevalence of hypertension in both the rural and urban areas of Nigeria, it has become a necessity to evaluate the lifestyle practices of people, as a preventive strategy. The descriptive cross-sectional study design was adopted for the study. Ethical approval was obtained from Imo State ministry of health, Ethical Review Board and permission was obtained from the village head. A Self-administered self-structured questionnaire was utilized, after gaining the voluntary consent of respondents. The data revealed that the majority of respondents in this study were aged 25-44years, self-employed, earned less than 50,000 and married. On the average, the reported lifestyle practice of respondents was average. However, respondents’ caffeine use, salt intake, beverage and alcohol consumption, sleep pattern, weight and blood pressure monitoring were poor. The data analysis revealed that among other socio-demographic studies, gender had more significance on lifestyle modification practice. It is very important that lifestyle modification practices are utilized in disease prevention such as hypertension. Socio-demographic variables should be considered while influencing the uptake of positive healthy lifestyle, which seem to play a role in the practice level of respondents, especially gender, occupation and income. As community oriented research, health education should be geared towards utilizing locally available resources in the promotion of health.