INVESTIGATION INTO THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN PHYSICAL HEALTH PARAMETERS AND TONGUE IMAGE CHARACTERISTICS IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

Objective: To investigate the correlation between physical health and tongue signs in college students. Methods. Twelve hundred and fourteen college students in the first year of a university in Ningbo were randomly selected as the study subjects, all of whom met the inclusion criteria to test their physical health and perform Chinese medicine tongue diagnosis. All collected data were later imported into an Excel sheet to create a database, and SPSS19.0 statistical software was used for data statistics and analysis. The mean of the measured data was expressed as standard deviation +/-, the count data was expressed as frequency, the categorical data was expressed as X2 test, and the analysis was performed using binary logistic regression. Results. (1) Among each constitution type, the agreement rates from highest to lowest were: damp-heat constitution (85.17%), blood stasis constitution (83.33%), calm constitution (79.78%), yin deficiency constitution (75.68%), yang deficiency constitution (74.47%), phlegm-damp constitution (69.70%), qi deficiency constitution (65.00%), qi-yu constitution (0.00%), special endowment physique (0.00%). (2) The two factors of gender and obesity had a small effect on the agreement rate of the results of the tongue image and health status questionnaire in identifying TCM constitution, and the difference was not statistically significant (p>0.05). (3) Two factors, the degree of understanding of the health status questionnaire and the environment in which the tongue images were taken, had a greater influence on the agreement rate between the tongue images and the health status questionnaire in identifying the TCM physique, and the difference was statistically significant (p < 0.05). (4) Logistic regression analysis showed that lung capacity, sitting forward bend, 1000m, standing long jump for boys, 50m and 800m for girls were the influencing factors of normal tongue image. Conclusion. There is a correlation between the physical health status of college students and tongue signs, so the method of using tongue sign analysis to identify TCM physique has a high feasibility.