relationship between illness perceptions and nutritional knowledge with eating behaviors among ardabil rural hypertensive patients

background: patients knowledge and perceptions from hypertension and related nutrition as a central factor has important role in hypertension controlling. this study aimed to determine relationship between illness perceptions and nutritional knowledge with eating behaviors on rural hypertensive patients. methods: in a cross-sectional study, 671 hypertensive patients were selected as a multi-stage random sampling with inclusion criteria from the rural areas of ardabil city in 2013. data collecting instrument include from 4-part questionnaire included demographic questions and questions about dietary knowledge, illness perception and 3-day food registering questionnaire.  data were collected by trained health workers with interview and nutritional data include macronutrients (fat, cholesterol, protein, carbohydrate and total energy) extracted with nutritionist 4 (n4) software analyzed using excel 2007, spss - 18 and pearson correlation, multiple linear regression, considering the significance level at 0.05. findings: 74% of participants were female; mean (sd) age was 50.2 ± 6.4 years, duration of disease 5.9 ± 4 years.  majority of participants 75.9% (509 patients) had elementary education. patient illness perception and knowledge was moderate.  fat intake was 92.1gr, protein 110.3 g and carbohydrates 317 g per day, also the average daily energy intake was 2539 kcal. perception scores correlated positively significant with nutritional knowledge (p<0.01, r=0.583) and negatively significant correlated with fat(p<0.01, r= - 0.352), cholesterol(p<0.01, r= - 0.09), energy intake(p<0.01, r= - 0.318), systolic (p<0.01, r= - 0.614) and diastolic blood pressure(p<0.01, r=0.400). nutritional knowledge as well as was found a significant negatively correlation with mean fat, cholesterol, energy intake, systolic and diastolic blood pressure. regression model showed that the nutritional knowledge and illness perception can be predicted 47.8% of systolic blood pressure variance.  conclusion: patients nutritional perceptions was not satisfactory, patient’s energy intake and fat intake were higher than recommended amounts by related scientific organizations.