American star Tom Hanks on his arrival on the landing-stage of Venice Lido, September 2, 1995 to present the film " Apollo 13 " by director Ron Haward during the 52nd Venice Film Festival.
American star Tom Hanks on his arrival on the landing-stage of Venice Lido, September 2, 1995 to present the film " Apollo 13 " by director Ron Haward during the 52nd Venice Film Festival. Reuters

In today’s world, to make a living, working in shifts is extremely common a practice. As a result, different types of health hazard are also increasing amongst workers.

A recent study which got published online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine claims men those who work in shift tend to be at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 Diabetes is known as the most common form of diabetes that affects 90 to 95% of the 26 million Americans with diabetes. Famous actor Tom Hanks was also diagnosed with this disease.

According to the authors, till date, the reasons for this observation are not clear, but their findings suggest that men working shift patterns might need to pay more attention to the possible health consequences of their working schedule.

In this research, scientists retrieved 12 international studies that involved more than 226,500 participants, 14,600 of whom were suffering from diabetes.

The analysed data suggests that any period of shift work was associated with a 9 percent increased risk of developing diabetes compared with people who were working normal office hours.

This increased risk went up to 37 percent for men.

"According to Times of India; Daytime levels of the male hormone testosterone are controlled by the internal body clock, so it is possible that repeated disruption may affect this," researchers noted, pointing to research implicating low male hormone levels in insulin resistance and diabetes.”
Most shift patterns, excluding mixed and evening shifts, were connected with an increased risk of the disease compared with those working normal office hours.

And rotating shifts where people work different parts of the 24 hour cycle regularly, than that of a fixed pattern, were associated with the highest risk: 42 percent.

It is believed that rotating shifts make it more difficult for people to adjust to a regular sleep-wake cycle, and some research suggests that lack of sleep, or less sleep, may induce or worsen insulin resistance, authors said.