Working long hours increases the risk of diabetes

Stay away from the keyboard, ladies. Bending over, burning midnight oil and going from the front can seem like the smart thing to do for women in the business world. But there may be a price to pay in terms of health. New study shows that working long hours increases the risk of diabetes in women.

Mahee Gilbert-Ouimet, an epidemiologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto, reviewed data from a database of over 7,000 workers. As reported by Time, Canada has been followed for over 12 years to better understand the impact of working hours on diabetes risk. In the study, published in BMJ Diabetes Research & Care, they report that women working more than 45 hours a week are 51% more likely to develop diabetes than women who worked only 35 to 40 hours per week. week.

The fact that long hours of work can be related to diabetes is not surprising, as Time notes. People who work more than 40 hours a week often experience higher levels of stress, which can change hormones like cortisol. Changes in cortisol affect the body's insulin levels and its ability to break down sugar. Higher stress also disrupts sleep and leads to poor mental health, which in turn contributes to changes in weight and insulin levels. All of this can contribute to diabetes.

The real shock? Working longer and harder did not increase the risk of diabetes in men. In fact, it seems to have a protective effect for men, actually reducing their risk of diabetes.

Although there are many possible reasons for this discrepancy, one factor may be that women often perform a second shift at home.

"If you think of all the unpaid work that they do outside of their work hours, like housework for example, they simply do more than men, which can be stressful and have a negative impact on your health, "said co-author of the study, Mahee Gilbert-Ouimet, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and active in this field for 12 years, as the only one. reported CNN.

Another key factor may involve the lower wage that women often receive for their work. The worries of money can trigger a spiral of stress.

"Even when men and women do a similar job, women earn less. Of course, this would have an impact on women's health. Think of the stress of working harder and getting less for it, "Gilbert-Ouimet said, as CNN notes. "It is important for us to study women, they are still undervalued in most areas of health, and it is really a shame, because if we take a closer look, there is still great inequalities. "

All of this is not just bad news for women.

" This should be telling for companies, especially when they still have to pay for care. health, "said Orfeu Buxton, professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State, CNN." Diabetes is common, expensive and it's a killer, and we really need to understand the factors other than medicine and treatment on which we can intervene to prevent diabetes. "