Working 55+ hours a week raises Type 2 diabetes risk

Working for over 55 hours a week could up type 2 diabetes risk, according to a new research, Headlines and Global News reported.

Researchers at the University College London did a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies and unpublished individual-level data by assessing the effects of long working hours on type 2 diabetes risk.

Long working hours had been associated with various health problems among employees. Citing a 2004 Bureau of Labour Statistics data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that nearly 15 million Americans worked full time on evening shift, night shift, rotating shifts, or other employer arranged irregular shifts.

Extended working hours could also affect sleep and people with deprived sleep increased the risk of several chronic illnesses such as heart disease and gastrointestinal diseases.

According to the findings of the current study, people doing jobs with low socio-economic status who worked for at least 55 hours every week had a roughly 30-per cent higher risk of developing diabetes as opposed to those who worked for 35 and 40 hours a week.

Researchers considered health behaviours such as smoking and physical activity, as also other risk factors including age, sex, and obesity.

According to the researchers, this co-relation existed even after excluding shift work, that had been shown to up the risk of obesity and developing type-2 diabetes.

Meanwhile, new diabetes cases had leveled off after years of sharp increases in a surprising sign that health officials might be starting to get America's obesity epidemic under control, Bloomberg reported.

In 2012, 8.3 per cent of American were diagnosed with diabetes as against 7.9 per cent in 2008, a study released Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed. The caseload had increased dramatically from 1990 when just 3.5 per cent of the US population was newly diagnosed with diabetes.

The finding fitted with earlier research that had showed the obesity epidemic in the US was stabilising as celebrities, governments and corporations pushed to improve Americans' diets and exercise.

Obesity is a main cause of Type 2 diabetes, which usually developed in adults and was the most common form of the disease. The news however, surprised researchers.

Bloomberg quoted Betul Hatipoglu, an endocrinologist at Cleveland Clinic as saying he had not expected anything like that at all.

He said the signals had been there that diabetes was continuing to be on the rise and becoming an even bigger problem. He said the study gave the researchers hope it might have plateaued at some point.