Job Burnout: Add diabetes to list of health complaints
Researcher says burnout as harmful as smoking
Chronic job burnout — the core components of which are emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, and cognitive weariness — might be a risk factor for the onset of type 2 diabetes in apparently healthy individuals, say Israeli researchers who have posed yet another health link to job stress.
Emotional burnout or stress has been shown in previous studies to be associated with heart disease and musculoskeletal pain, but this was the first study linking it to type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes.
Samuel Melamed, PhD, a psychology professor at Tel Aviv University, led a team of researchers that has analyzed dozens of studies that center on the idea that burnout may negatively affect workers' physical health more than previously believed.
In the study released in November 2006, Melamed says findings suggest stress plays a significant role in the development of type 2 diabetes; however, the findings are not conclusive, and more research is called for.
"Earlier studies have found it to be associated with cardiovascular disease risk, sleep disturbances, impaired fertility and musculoskeletal pain," he says. "Our finding suggests that the potential damage to health may be greater than suspected and it may also include a risk of diabetes."
Burnout harm equal to smoking, inactivity
The Tel Aviv study examined 677 workers, three fourths of whom (76%) were men. Of the total, 17 developed type 2 diabetes during the three- to five-year follow-up period.
The authors of the study found that job burnout exposed workers to 1.84 times the normal risk of diabetes, even after adjusting for the effects of gender, obesity, age, activity levels, and smoking; when a smaller subset was examined and the potential effects of high blood pressure could be ruled out, the risk for diabetes posed by burnout increased to 4.32 times normal.
The authors say that job burnout may only be one of the factors contributing to diabetes.
"It is possible that these people are prone to diabetes because they can't handle stress very well," Melamed writes. "Their coping resources may have been depleted not only due to job stress but also life stresses, such as stressful life events and daily hassles."
The Tel Aviv researchers' findings appear in the November/December issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.
Chronic job burnout -- the core components of which are emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, and cognitive weariness -- might be a risk factor for the onset of type 2 diabetes in apparently healthy individuals, say Israeli researchers who have posed yet another health link to job stress.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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