You Just Can’t Make This Up
According to a study published in the March 1 issue of the journal Sleep frequent napping is associated with an elevated prevalence of type 2 diabetes and impaired fasting glucose in an older Chinese population. This study joins a long list of studies that show that everything from taking statins to breathing is associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes.
This most recent study analyzed baseline data from the Guangzhou Biobank Cohort Study, a collaboration between the Guangzhou Number 12 People’s Hospital and the Universities of Birmingham and Hong Kong. The community-based study took place in Guangzhou, China, where 19,567 participants between the ages of 50 and 93 years were recruited from 2003 to 2004 and 2005 to 2006. The sample comprised 13,972 women with a mean age of 61.4 years and 5,595 men with an average age of 64.2 years.
Diabetic Investor doesn’t mean to diminish the results of such ground breaking research however it seems that if you would have taken this same population and looked for a relationship between getting dressed in the morning and developing diabetes you would have found a correlation. The fact is the older you get the more you likely are to develop diabetes.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) nearly 60 million people age 65 and over have diabetes and according to the National Institute of Health (NIH) 35.4% of adults older than 60 have either diabetes or impaired fasting glucose. Given these known facts does it surprise anyone that this study found that older adults are developing diabetes.
The real kicker here isn’t what the study found but just what are we to do with this information. Should the Chinese government send a team of people into the field to make sure these adults aren’t napping too much?
Some may recall that Diabetic Investor had asked subscribers to submit their own version of stupid studies related to diabetes. And given the depth of worthless research related to diabetes this really wasn’t a tough task. Considering that amount of this garbage we’re seriously considering sponsoring a new contest that rewards subscribers for submitting nominees for truly significant research – you know the boring stuff like which therapy regimens work better and what treatment options actually work at controlling diabetes. We realize that this is not as ground breaking as napping and diabetes or a woman’s breast size and diabetes but somehow we think it just might be slightly more relevant.
And Diabetic Investor has some advice for the next group of researchers getting set to study such earth shattering issues like watching football and developing diabetes or how driving over the speed limit leads to diabetes. Before you begin this work think of something Anna Brackett once said; “Do not seek for information of which you cannot make use.”
