Study: Emotional Distress Doubles Diabetes Risk
People who acknowledge that they are emotionally distressed are more than twice as likely to develop diabetes, according to a recent study.
Although research has been conducted in this area, there were no previous definitive conclusions about whether self-perceived emotional distress affected diabetes risk.
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To conduct their study, researchers administered a questionnaire to 32,586 young men with a mean age of 31 who didn’t have a history of diabetes between 1995 and 2011.
Participants self-assessed their emotional distress as part of the Metabolic, Lifestyle, and Nutrition Assessment in Young Adults study by answering, “Are you preoccupied by worries or concerns that affect your overall wellbeing?”
After a mean follow-up of 6 years, researchers found that 723 participants had developed diabetes.
In addition, they noted that distress was present in 53% of participants with diabetes, and participants who persistently reported distress were 2.14 times more likely to have diabetes than those who persistently denied distress.
“Sustained emotional distress contributes to the development of diabetes among young and apparently healthy men in a time-dependent manner,” researchers concluded. “These findings warrant awareness by primary caregivers when stratifying diabetes risk.”
--Amanda Balbi
Reference:
Twig G, Gerstein HC, Fruchter E, et al. Self-perceived emotional distress and diabetes risk among young men. Am J Prev Med. Published online January 22, 2016. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2015.12.006.