Abstract
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between consumption of sweet drinks and foods with accompanying oral hygiene health behaviors, and their condition of oral hygiene rural residents who are expected to have relatively poor oral hygiene compared to their urban counterparts. Methods: The 384 subjects, who are aged over 40 and have taken dental examination by dentists in health branches in 6 Myouns, Kongju city, Chungchongnamdo Province during the period between June 1st through 31st, 2004, were asked about dental health behaviors and subjective symptoms using questionnaires. Results and Conclusions: Based on dental health behavior according to sweet beverage and food, the dental health behavior was desirable in both sexes for 'almost daily drink' concerning sweet beverages and 'almost never eat' concerning sweet food, with no statistical significance. As for oral conditions, the groups who responded to 'almost daily drink/eat' for sweet beverages and food had the highest rate of non-treated teeth, lost teeth, DMFT and CPITN, with no statistical significance. Multiple logistic regression analysis with the consumption frequency of sweet foods as explanatory variables and 5 factors of oral conditions as dependent variables, revealed that there was no statistical significance in the oral conditions according to the consumption frequency of sweet drinks while, as for sweet drinks, there was a significant difference to the group who answered as 'occasional gum bleeding' in the case of 'almost daily eat.' responders(OR= 2.33, 95% CI=1.42-3.81, p<0.05).
