City Life May Be To Blame For Rising Diabetes Rates

Aesop's fable about the dangers of urban life goes something like this: A City Mouse visits his cousin in the country and is shocked at the humble meal they eat. The City Mouse invites the Country Mouse to his home in town, where he promises to serve a delicious feast. But when the Country Mouse comes calling, dangerous and stressful interruptions from dogs and cats prevent them from digging into their meal in peace. Returning to his simple home, the Country Mouse thinks, “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.” The results of new study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism echo Aesop's ancient truth. Researchers from Philipp's University in Marburg, Germany and the University of Namibia demonstrate that the stress of moving from a rural setting to an urban one makes newly urban transplants more vulnerable to diabetes and other metabolic disorders -- at least in the developing world. "Our findings indicate that people who leave a rural lifestyle for an urban environment are exposed to high levels of stress and tend to have higher levels of the hormone cortisol," said study co-author Dr. Peter Herbert Kann, M.D. Ph.D. in a press release. "This stress is likely contributing to the rising rates of diabetes we see in developing nations.” Currently, the rates of diabetes in the developing world are increasing; 347 million people around the globe have diabetes, and more than 80 percent of diabetes-related deaths occur in low...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news