ScienceDaily: Depression May Trigger Diabetes In Older Adults
This new study is critically important for understanding how depression, diabetes, and stress are related. For the first time, depresson itself, instead of depression and lifestyle factors, is shown to lead to diabetes.
The author notes that depressives produce more cortisol, the stress hormone. The cortisol urges the body to keep blood sugar high, because the body feels the fight or flight response, and prolonged high blood sugar and cortisol can do damage to insulin receptors.
This study was done with men and women over the age of 65, but there’s every reason to suspect the same results would occur with younger subjects. In fact, depression and diabetes go hand in hand in many studies on people of all ages. (Sorry, no time to find the links right now.)
I would add that it’s also possible for their to be an autonomic nervous system connection, but we’ll save that for another time.