Scientists from the Medical University of Xinjiang (China) ensure that workers under elevated levels of stress for a long time may be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
In his study, whose results publishes the magazine 'Diabetes Care', analyzed the data of 3,730 workers of the oil industry in China, of which none had diabetes at the beginning of the investigation.After 12 years of monitoring, employees who developed stressful tasks had up to 57 percent more likely to end up developing diabetes.And that of those who did not have the support of friends or family, or did not devote time to recreational activities, their risk rose to 68 percent.
Most cases of type 2 diabetes are associated with obesity and aging, and take place when the body is unable to produce the insulin necessary to convert blood sugar into energy.And if not, it can cause serious problems, including amputations, blindness, heart disease or stroke.
The study analyzed several forms of stress related to work and discovered that what the researchers described as "stressful factors" was to have a lot of work overload, unique job expectations or responsibilities, or work tensions.On the other hand, other problems such as bad organization or communication problems did not seem to influence the chances of developing diabetes.In the same way, among the external factors that could aggravate that risk, they stood out in self -care or a lower capacity to face the problems.
The study, however, is not a controlled experiment designed to demonstrate whether changes in work stress or resources to face it could influence the chances of developing diabetes.Likewise, another of its limitations is that it focused on a single industrial sector, in which men predominate, or that only the link between stress and diabetes was studied twice.
Even so, the findings are added to the evidence that stress can play a role in the development of diabetes and suggest that it is worth paying more attention to this relationship, said Pouran Faghri, director of the Environmental Health Center and Promotionof health at the University of Connecticut in Storrs (United States).
"Stress has been associated with behavioral problems such as comfort or binge, food consumption with high fat and energy content, poor dietary choices, physical inactivity and sedentary behavior," according to Faghri, which did not participate in the study.There is also an association with the decrease in sleep quality and negative psychological health, such as depression, anxiety, insecurity, impotence and low self -esteem."All these behavioral changes can lead to the obesity and development of type 2 diabetes," he said.