Both crossing the pond by plane and working night shiftsThey not only cause dark circles, drowsiness and bad mood. These activities can alsopromote diabetes and obesitydue to a mismatch in the biological clock thatalters insulin secretion, as shown by a study published by the journalScience Translational Medicine and which the SINC agency echoes.
“Our results show that people who work night shifts and are predisposed to diabetes are more likely to develop it,” says Orfeu M. Buxton, neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School (USA) and leader of the research. To reach this conclusion, Buxton and his colleagues worked for six weeks with 21 healthy people. The volunteers slept 10 hours a day for the first three weeks, but then their rest was reduced to 5.6 hours of sleep every 24 hours to simulate work shift rotations. In addition, in the month and a half that the study lasted, they were unable to exercise.
Thedisturbance of wake-sleep cyclesit affected the insulin-secreting pancreatic cells, which produced an increase in blood glucose. That is, the step prior to diabetes. Body mass was also affected, as the participants showed a reduction in metabolic activity that could translate into an annual weight gain of more than 4.5 kilos.
The good news is that if the circadian clock was reset, after nine daysthe negative effects on the body reversed. Experts are still not sure how to improve health after years of circadian disruption, but they proposereduce the frequency of work shifts to minimize their consequences. In this sense, work shifts that change every month would be less damaging than those that change every few days.
