Demographics, lifestyles, health characteristics, and dietary intake among dietary supplement users in Japan.

BACKGROUND: The associations between supplement use and certain demographics, lifestyles, health characteristics, and dietary intakes have not been studied in a large population in non-Western societies. The objective of our study was to investigate the association between supplement use and demographics, lifestyles, health characteristics, and dietary intake in a population-based cohort study in Japan.
METHODS: Subjects were the 78 531 participants (45-74 years) who completed a self-administered questionnaire in 1995 or 1998 in a 5-year follow-up survey by the Japan Public Health Center-based prospective Study on cancer and cardiovascular disease. The questionnaire included enquiries about supplement use, occupation, height, weight, smoking, alcohol, physical activity, dietary behaviours, working hours, subjective stress, as well as intakes for 138 foods.
RESULTS: The supplement users were likely to have formerly smoked or never smoked. Female supplement users were likely to consume alcohol moderately. The prevalence of users was higher in the elderly, the self-employed, those with lower body mass index, greater physical activity, lower frequency of eating prepared food, higher frequency of eating out, and higher stress level in both sexes after mutual adjustment. Mean intakes of energy and nutrients were lower for users than for non-users.
CONCLUSION: The demographics, lifestyles, health characteristics, and dietary intakes may need to be adjusted when evaluating the effect of dietary supplements on disease because they can become potential confounding factors.