Written by Daniel Schneider
The topic of today’s Saturday Morning Research Review looks at stress as a contributor to the development of type 1 diabetes.
We know that both environmental and genetic factors play a role in the development of type 1, and we also know that rates of type 1 diabetes have been rising faster than can be explained by genetics alone. This allows researchers the opportunity to identify environmental factors that might influence disease development. If we can identify and control for those factors, we might be able to decrease the risk of developing type 1.
The authors of this study, which was also featured in a New York Times article, wanted to see if childhood stress was associated with disease development later in life. There have been studies that have done this retrospectively, where you ask people diagnosed with diabetes if they experienced stress as a child to see if they experienced more stress than a non-diabetic population. But this is one of the first studies that analyzed this question prospectively, a much stronger way to determine if stress is causing type 1.
Questionnaires that were able to determine stressful life experiences were given throughout a child’s life. Many years later, the authors sought to determine if having more stressful life experiences was associated with a subsequent diagnosis of diabetes. Even when controlling for confounding factors, it was determined that children experiencing a stressful life experience were nearly three times as likely to have been diagnosed with type 1 by 14 years of age. So what are we to do with this information?
The theory behind why stress might contribute to type 1 diabetes is the beta cell stress hypothesis. Essentially, the harder the beta cells have to work, or the more insulin that they need to produce, the more likely that they will fail, or that the process of type 1 diabetes will be initiated. Stress has the potential to drastically increase cortisol levels, a stress hormone that blunts insulin sensitivity. So when cortisol levels are high, the beta cells need to make more insulin for the same amount of food when compared to the same food with low cortisol levels. This tiring of the beta cells is hypothesized to initiate the type 1 diabetes process.
These stressful life experiences included things such as divorce, illnesses, or deaths in the immediate family, so they are not exactly things that a child can be shielded from. However, there is no reason to assume that any general stressors would not also contribute to these processes. Working with kids on meditation, exercise, and generally being a kid and doing kid stuff seems like reasonable things to do with little downside. And there is every chance that we all should apply these principles. For many of us, athletics is our stress release. Time on the bike is my happy time. Find your happy place, keep your stress levels low, and set barriers to keep stress levels low.