Over a hundred million people in the U.S. suffer from diabetes or are at an increased risk of diabetes. More than 9 percent of the U.S. population is living with diabetes and almost 84 million people are prediabetics, a condition that is bound to convert into diabetes type 2 without appropriate treatment.
Some of the risk factors for diabetes type 2 include being overweight, a lack of physical activity, obesity, high cholesterol, being 45 years or older, a positive family history of stroke or heart disease, or a high blood pressure.
Psychological factors also play a major role in diabetes type 2. Suffering from depression may increase the risk and according to the latest study, work-related stress may also increase its likelihood, especially for females.
Guy Fagherazzi, a research scientist working at the Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health in Paris, France was overseeing this study.
A 21 Percent Increased Risk
The investigators set out to check whether the association between any “mentally tiring work” and the diabetes type 2 incidence is true. For this purpose, they checked over 70,000 women over a span of 22 years.
More than 75 percent of the women leading this study were teachers. Almost 24 percent of them called their work as “mentally tiring.”
Throughout their study, almost 4187 women suffered from diabetes. The analysis of the current study received that the diabetes prevalence was higher in women who called their work to be mentally tiring.
Specifically speaking, those who said that their work was “very” mentally taxing at the beginning of the study were 21 percent more likely to suffer from this condition than those with little or no mentally tiring work.
When the researchers adjusted other factors such as unhealthy life habits or other cardiometabolic risk factors like a high BMI or blood pressure, the link between work and the risk of diabetes was found to be the same.
The observational results drawn from this study suggests that the long-term metabolic impacts of the work-related stress in case of women must be considered strongly.
Although the scientists were unable to determine what increased the risk of diabetes in these women, the results indicate that it is not due to the usual side effects associated with type 2 diabetes. The findings also suggest the importance of mental tiredness as a risk factor for developing diabetes.
Type 2 diabetes and mentally tiring jobs are quite prevalent. The scientists have also mentioned how support in the workplace is has a stronger impact on the stress related to work in women more than men.
Therefore, greater support for females in stressful work environments can help avoid chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes.
In the near future, the lead scientist along with his team plan to check the effects of mentally stressing work on people who have already been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The researchers have hoped that the findings of these studies will help develop new ways to tackle this condition.
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