It’s tough enough to manage diabetes when everything is going well. But what about when you’re depressed? Well, it turns out that depression and diabetes are related. In fact, feeling “blue” may raise a woman’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to new research.
The study, which appears in the December 2004 issue of Diabetes Care, shows that symptoms of depression in middle-aged women are related to higher levels of insulin resistance. As you most likely have learned, insulin resistance – the body’s inability to use its natural insulin – is a precursor to diabetes.
Researchers say the findings may help explain why depression is twice as common among people with diabetes compared with the general population. Depression is also associated with poor diabetes management.
Depression and diabetes linked
Researchers looked at the association between symptoms of depression and diabetes among a group of 2,662 middle-aged women. All were free of diabetes when the study began. Three years later, 97 cases of diabetes were diagnosed among the women. It turns out that symptoms of depression were linked to greater levels of insulin resistance among the women. In addition, depressed African-American women were more than twice as likely to develop diabetes.
It has been said that in addition to increasing the risk of diabetes, depression can alter hormones relating to how the body handles stress. This in turn can affect body fat distribution and how the body handles blood sugar metabolism. They say people should be encouraged to seek treatment for depression and maintain and adopt active lifestyles, healthy diets, and weight loss, if needed, to reduce their risk of diabetes.
