| Holidays can be dangerous for diabetics: report
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The lack of long-term control of blood
sugar levels that puts diabetics at risk of complications stems
largely from lapses in eating and exercise habits during the winter
holiday season, new research indicates.
Investigators from Taiwan monitored glycosylated hemoglobin --
which reflects the degree of glucose control over time -- in people
with type 2 diabetes, and found that glycosylated hemoglobin (called
A1C) concentrations tended to increase during the winter months.
This was not corrected during the summer months.
Consequently, seasonal splurges may pose serious dangers to diabetics,
by causing their A1C to build slowly over time, the team cautions.
In people with type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease,
A1C tends to rise over time, increasing the risk of heart disease,
kidney problems, blindness and other complications of their disease.
To investigate whether the A1C increase occurs largely during the
winter holiday season, Dr. Harn-Shen Chen of the Taipei Veterans
General Hospital and colleagues periodically checked A1C levels
in 110 type 2 diabetics from November to April.
In Chinese culture, the winter holiday season generally starts
at the winter solstice on December 23, and continues until the Lantern
Festival in February. Like other nationalities, the Chinese typically
celebrate the holiday season by eating salty meals, drinking alcohol
and skipping their normal exercise regimen.
Ideally, A1C levels should be about seven percent or lower. The
investigators found that A1C levels increased by roughly 0.2 percent
over the holiday season, rising to approximately 7.5 percent during
the month of February.
Moreover, when the researchers checked A1C levels in 90 participants
who returned the following winter season, they found no significant
change in A1C levels, suggesting that the increases are not corrected
during the summer months, and could therefore accumulate over time.
"The cumulative effects of the yearly A1C gain during the
winter holidays are likely to contribute to the substantial increase
in A1C that frequently occurs among type 2 diabetic subjects,"
the authors write in the journal Diabetes Care.
Over time, these seasonal spikes in blood sugar could "result
in markedly increased blood glucose levels in a few years,"
they add.
SOURCE: Diabetes Care, February 2004.
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