According To Studies, Often Feeling Lonely Can Trigger Type 2 Diabetes

Self-illustrated and lonely (Pexels / Daria Shevtsova)

JAKARTA - There are two categories of diabetes, namely type 1 and type 2. According to recent studies, loneliness can lead to type 2 diabetes. How is type 2 diabetes and is it related to loneliness? Here's an explanation of the results of the study and expert recommendations to solve it.

Type 2 diabetes can be triggered by genetics, unhealthy diet and lifestyle. In the body's mechanism, insulin is produced to process glucose in cells throughout the body so that it becomes energy.

For people with type 2 diabetes, the body does not respond to insulin properly and or does not produce enough insulin so that glucose builds up.

The results of a study published in September 2020 in Diabetologia show that there are factors related to social aspects that greatly affect type 2 diabetes.

Loneliness is understood as feeling alone even though life is not alone can increase the higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This study involved 4,000 adults without type 2 diabetes or can be said to be healthy.

The participants were researched on how often they felt left out or isolated from others. On a scale of 1 to 3, higher scores indicate more frequent feelings of loneliness.

After about 10 years, 264 or 6.4 percent of the participants had a potential for type 2 diabetes. People with type 2 diabetes had an average loneliness score of 1.42. While the score is 1.33 in individuals who do not have the potential to develop type 2 diabetes.

From these studies, the probability of suffering from type 2 diabetes due to loneliness was 46 percent.

A doctor of science, philosophy and head of the Department of Behavioral Science at University College London in the United Kingdom, Andrew Steptoe describes the condition of loneliness that has the potential to lead to type 2 diabetes.

According to him, loneliness is a subjective experience of dissatisfaction with social and personal relationships.

In another study published in December 2017 in BMC Public Health, it found that fewer close friends and social contacts also had the potential to increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

This study explores how many close friends and family members are frequently contacted. The lower the social network size, the potential for an increase in developing type 2 diabetes was 12 percent.

The two studies above focus more on the influence of psychosocial stress that develops due to feelings of loneliness in increasing levels of the hormones cortisol and epinephrine. These two hormones play a role in increasing the potential for type 2 diabetes.

According to recommendations from Sabine Rohrmann, Ph.D., MPH of the Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Prevention Institute at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, you can walk into a park when you feel lonely. Deal with loneliness healthily and avoid certain patterns of stress.