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Depression and Type 2 Diabetes—Symptoms or Disease?

via Diabetes Self-Management Blog

According to studies, people with diabetes are three to four times as likely to have major depression than people in the general population. Why should this be?

John McManamy, author of Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder,” says: “For many years it was thought that depression was a complication of diabetes, which may well be the case. More recent research, however, points to depression as a possible cause or trigger.

“A Kaiser Permanente study of some 1,680 subjects found that those with diabetes were more likely to have been treated for depression within six months before their diabetes diagnosis. About 84% of people with diabetes reported a higher rate of earlier depressive episodes.

“A 2004 Johns Hopkins study tracking 11,615 initially nondiabetic adults aged 48–67 over six years found that ‘depressive symptoms predicted incident Type 2 diabetes.’…Women, in particular are at greater risk, according to other studies.” And another study shows that this risk, among both men and women, persists even after controlling for weight, caloric intake, smoking, and economic factors.

Healthy Living Made Easy With New Diabetes Foodsmart ENewsletter

via MediaLexicon

For people with diabetes, the daily decisions they make about food can have an immediate impact on their health. The American Diabetes Association (ADA), together with The HealthCentral Network’s FoodFit.com, launched Diabetes Foodsmart, a new eNewsletter designed to bring the fun back to food for those with diabetes.

Based on the success of the book Diabetes Fit Food, written by FoodFit founder and president Ellen Haas and published this spring by ADA, the bi-weekly Diabetes Foodsmart eNewsletter offers a fresh, simple, seasonal approach to food with tips and recipes for a healthy lifestyle.

Sleep added to diabetes risk equation

via: The Times

Studies show a link between disease and too little — or too much — shut-eye

A healthy diet and exercise are critical to managing diabetes. But now sleep is being added to the equation. Too little sleep and too much sleep are both risks for developing and aggravating diabetes, US scientists suggest.

“What research is telling us is that sleep is the piece of the health picture that has been overlooked until now, and which you can control to a great extent,” Dr Donna Arand from the Sleep Disorders Centre at Kettering Hospital in Ohio told the Sunday Times.

[snip]

Dr Lawrence Epstein, from the US’s Sleep HealthCentres and Harvard Medical School, said several studies in the US showed that people who did not get enough sleep had higher rates of diabetes.

The studies found that:

1. Middle-aged adults sleeping less than five hours a night were two and a half times more likely to have diabetes than those sleeping the recommended seven to eight hours; and
2. Healthy young male volunteers in a small trial developed impaired glucose tolerance after just six nights of being restricted to four hours’ sleep.

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