Diabetes: Living longer with antidepressants
People with diabetes are more likely to suffer from depression at the same time. Antidepressants can save their lives.
There are some reasons for the connection between diabetes and depression. For example, the knowledge that diabetes is associated with an incurable disease that can result in serious consequences is rather stressful. The connection is also the other way round: more people with depression develop diabetes than mentally healthy people.
In the interaction stress hormones play a central role. They can fuel subliminal inflammatory processes that promote diabetes but also contribute to mental illness.
Correctly measure blood sugar
How to avoid measurement errors and where your values should be, see here.
Double risk of depression
In fact, the risk of depression for people with diabetes is about twice as high as for people with healthy sugar metabolism. Especially severe depression is more common in comparison. "Both diseases independently contribute to higher mortality rates," explains study leader Hong-Ming Chen of Chang Gung University in Taiwan.
Diabetics can die from impaired blood glucose levels either directly or indirectly due to sequelae such as cardiovascular disease. People with depression not only have an increased risk of suicide. They also tend due to the constant stress to an unhealthy lifestyle with high alcohol consumption and smoking, poor diet and too little exercise.
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